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Spheres of Influence
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Damming the Flow of Drugs into Drinking Water Pat Hemminger Abstract
Over the past several years roughly 100 pharmaceuticals have been found in waterways in Europe and the United States, a finding that raises the question of what effects such pollution may be having on ecosystems and human health. To address this question in the European Union, the European Medicines Agency has proposed an environmental risk assessment procedure that pharmaceutical companies must follow in bringing new products to market. The new guidance is the first to recommend long-term ecotoxicity testing for environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals from the outset of the proposed testing program (in contrast, U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements for chronic ecotoxicity testing come later in that agency’s assessment) . The guidance is also the first to take into account the possibility of environmental effects from extremely low concentrations of bioactive substances such as endocrine disruptors.
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