Pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals, in their current allopathic version of synthetic chemicals, have become a major greening issue. This is a result of increasing environmental hazards and adverse effects on human health resulting from the chemical ingredients. The environmental factor, or E-Factor, devised by Roger Sheldon in 1992, is a calculation derived from dividing the total waste produced in the process of production (in kilograms) by the amount of product created, thus providing a ratio that allows one to interpret the efficiency of production processes. The higher the ratio or E-Factor, the more waste is generated. According to Sheldon's analysis, pharmaceutical companies produce more waste in manufacturing drugs than oil companies as a percentage of the material processed (though much less in real-volume terms). Fifteen years after developing his E-Factor, Sheldon argues that awareness of high E-ratios in the pharmaceutical industry has increased the sustainability of the industry, providing a boost to research, funding, and marketing of safe pharmaceuticals. This has increased the market efficiency and effectiveness of green efforts.

Increasingly, soil and water contamination from pharmaceuticals have become a critical concern among scientists, consumers, manufacturers, and policy makers. Low concentrations of pharmaceutically active compounds have been detected in surface water and groundwater around the world. These include medications for human and veterinary use (as in hormones and antibiotics). Human pharmaceuticals enter the environment through routes like human excretion sent to wastewater treatment plants, which may not be designed to remove pharmaceuticals. Because most human excreta are found in metabolized form, the toxic effects of the various internally formed metabolites need to be treated with special sewage designs. Hence, depending on the compound, existent waste treatment plants may or may not be effective. The Advanced Oxidation Process is a new wastewater management scheme that is being used in Canada. It helps to remove contaminants from water, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, endocrine-disrupting compounds, and industrial contaminants.

The environment is also affected by various other unintended modes of human activities. These include runoffs from sewage biosolids (sludge) applied to land as a fertilizer, the [Page 345]loss of dermally applied medications during bathing, irrigation with reclaimed wastewater or sewage effluents, release from leaky sewers, and so on. Equally critical in environmental contamination is the improper disposal of unused and expired pharmaceuticals both from manufacturing and household use.

There is a growing concern about the detrimental effects of the interactions of various types of pharmaceutical residues on aquatic species—both vertebrates and invertebrates. Because many drugs are designed to affect specific protein targets or receptors in humans, they can affect similar functions in other species that carry that receptor. For example, synthetic estrogen in human contraceptives has led to the feminization of male fish in the streams in the United Kingdom. The ecotoxicological effect of drugs can be seen among land and avian species, too. The use of analgesic diclofenac fed to livestock has led to a significant decline in the vulture population in India and Pakistan.

Engagement by multiple levels of government and multiple stakeholders holds much promise for addressing the management of pharmaceuticals in the environment. For instance, on the law enforcement front, the United States and the United Kingdom have taken the lead in passing guidelines for environmental risk assessment, such as toxicity tests for the approval of pharmaceuticals. Local governments have also taken proactive measures. In Canada, provincial waste management regulations require pharmaceutical brand owners to fund and organize pharmaceutical return programs. The County Council in Stockholm, Sweden, has undertaken a major initiative to classify pharmaceuticals according to their environmental impacts based on factors like toxicity, bioaccumulation, and persistence. This is expected to enable awareness-building labeling of medications.

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