Greener drug design, rather than wastewater treatment, is crucial to combating the pharmaceutical pollution crisis
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Humans are living in an increasingly medicated world with pharmaceuticals indispensable in modern healthcare and vital for the future.
About 43% of the sampled sites had levels of at least one drug that exceeded what is considered safe for ecological health. At the more-contaminated sites, complex mixtures of many APIs were detected, including a range of human and veterinary medications.For decades, evidence has grown that exposure to trace concentrations of APIs and their mixtures can cause severe developmental, physiological, morphological and behavioural alterations in wildlife.
The problem of API pollution is unfolding against a backdrop of multiple other human-caused pressures on biodiversity and ecosystem services.“APIs and their breakdown products pose a particular threat to biodiversity given that many have effects at extremely low exposures and challenge existing regulatory determinations of chemical persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity,” the study said.
There will be a need for training for pharmacists, physicians, nurses and veterinarians and prescribing guidelines should be produced that consider the environmental effect of medicines. To date, only Switzerland has implemented advanced tertiary treatment of wastewater at the national level.
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