**Fatshimetrie: The Need to Design More Environmentally Friendly Medicines**
The impact of pharmaceuticals on our ecosystems has become a growing concern, with potentially devastating consequences for wildlife and human health. While environmental protection efforts have primarily focused on improving wastewater treatment infrastructure to remove drugs before they are released into waterways, a more radical approach appears necessary.
A group of 17 eminent international scientists recently published a study in the journal “Fatshimetrie” highlighting the importance of designing more environmentally friendly medicines to counter the pharmaceutical pollution crisis. According to these researchers, greener medicines must be designed to minimize their effects on the environment throughout their life cycle.
Gorka Orive, professor of pharmacy at the University of the Basque Country, says that “more environmentally friendly medicines reduce the potential for pollution at every stage of their use.” It is undeniable that we live in an increasingly medicalized world, where pharmaceutical products are essential for modern health. However, this growing dependence comes at a high cost to the planet.
Releases into the environment during the production, use and disposal of medicines have led to contamination of ecosystems with mixtures of active ingredients, metabolites, additives and processing products. Michael Bertram, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, points out that “a wide variety of drugs have been detected in environments on every continent on Earth.”
The consequences of this pharmaceutical pollution are disastrous, with serious impacts on the health of wildlife and human populations. Examples such as the collapses of vulture populations in India and Pakistan, as well as cases of feminization of fish populations exposed to contraceptive pills, illustrate the dangers we face.
It is clear that drugs must be designed not only to be effective and safe, but also to pose a reduced health risk to wildlife and humans when present in the environment. Since drugs are specifically designed to have biological effects at low doses, their potential for pollution is all the more problematic.
A recent global study showed the extent of pollution from active drug ingredients, with 61 different substances detected in river water from 1,052 sites in 104 countries.. Approximately 43% of the sites sampled had levels of at least one drug exceeding what is considered safe for ecological health.
This situation represents a serious threat to wildlife, with impacts on the development, physiology and behaviour of exposed species. The consequences on species reproduction and survival can lead to population declines
Thus, it is imperative that stricter measures and concrete actions are taken to promote the design of environmentally friendly drugs. It is our collective responsibility to preserve our ecosystems and biodiversity by adopting more sustainable practices in the field of pharmacology. Only a radical change in the design and use of drugs will effectively combat the pharmaceutical pollution crisis and protect our planet for future generations.