In a paper published today in the Lancet Planetary Health, the diverse team illustrates how pharmaceutical pollution is an overlooked but urgent issue that needs co-ordinated action from across the pharmaceutical, healthcare and environmental sectors.
In a paper published today in the Lancet Planetary Health, the diverse team illustrates how pharmaceutical pollution is an overlooked but urgent issue that needs co-ordinated action from across the pharmaceutical, healthcare and environmental sectors.
Lead author, Dr Kelly Thornber, said: “At the moment many people don’t think about where our medicines come from or what happens to them after we swallow them. Medicines are a vital part of our healthcare system, so we need to find ways to use them without poisoning the environment at the same time.”
Senior author Professor Charles Tyler, who has been researching pharmaceuticals in the environment for almost four decades, said: “We’ve known for a long time that the medicines we take can have adverse impacts on wildlife, but little progress has been made in reducing environmental pollution levels. As a population, we are using increasing amounts of medicines and many of these directly enter the aquatic environment through our urine and faeces.
Read more at: University of Exeter
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