Alarm sounded on pharmaceutical pollution crisis

Our increasing dependency on pharmaceuticals comes at a major environmental cost, researchers have warned.

And an Exeter academic is urging manufacturers to take heed of the findings.

In an article published in the journal Nature Sustainabilty, researchers warn that discharges to the environment during drug production, use, and disposal have resulted in ecosystems around the globe being polluted with mixtures of pharmaceuticals, posing a growing danger to wildlife and human health.

While emphasising that pharmaceuticals are indispensable in modern healthcare and will remain crucial in the future, the researchers highlight the need for designing and manufacturing more sustainable drugs to combat this issue at source.

Commenting on the research, Charles Tyler, Professor of Environmental Biology and Ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter said: “Drugs in the environment has been an emerging issue for some time but now with evidenced cases for adverse effects in wildlife, together with a lack of data on the environmental risks for most drugs and marked increase in the use of many drug types, we need to better ensure that human medicines pose minimal threats to wildlife.

"Ensuring that ‘greener drugs by design’ features prominently in the drug development pipeline will help maximise environmental protection and in turn help to ensure the future sustainability of the drug industry and human medical healthcare.”

‘The urgent need for designing greener drugs’ is published in Nature Sustainability.