Medicines and the environment

A flycatcher bird perched on a branch with a mayfly in its beak

How do medicines affect the environment?

While we use medicines for their benefits, using medicines also involves risk. We are all familiar with the risk of adverse effects from using a medicine (both in the treated animal and the person handling the medicine): these risks are taken into account in the medicines licensing process. However, the risk of harm that medicines pose to the environment has only been receiving attention relatively recently.

Medicines can affect the environment in many ways:

  • carbon release into the atmosphere and pollution from the manufacture and transport of medicines

  • fluorinated gases used in anaesthesia released into the atmosphere

  • emissions from incinerating waste medicines

  • medicines pollution of waterways and land from excreted and discarded medicines

  • waste from medicines packaging and accessories.

When medicines get into the environment, their biological actions may continue and so affect organisms and ecosystems. Among the veterinary medicines used in companion animals, the parasiticides are the most obvious medicines to focus on, because of their widespread use and their clear potential to harm non-target organisms should they reach the environment. We know surprisingly little about the environmental fate of medicines, but thankfully published research is starting to help us to understand more.

What can we do about it?

Prescribers and other decision makers can help reduce all of the harmful environmental effects of medicines by making better choices. This means choosing the most effective treatment that causes the least harm, better management of medicines to avoid waste, and cutting out all unecessary use of medicines.

To make the best choices prescribers and other decision makers need reliable information. They need comparative information to help choose between different options and they need information that is not influenced by vested interests that aim to increase the sales of medicines. Providing a source of impartial, comparative and practical information on medicines has always been the focus of Veterinary Prescriber.

Making the best therapeutic choice goes hand-in-hand with the sustainable use of medicines.

Helpful Veterinary Prescriber resources in the VVMA

Veterinary Prescriber publishes evidence-based critical reviews of veterinary treatments in the form of CPD modules in the Virtual Veterinary Medicines Academy (VVMA). While there are several modules that more obviously deal with sustainable choices (some of these are listed below), all of our content is aimed at making the best, evidence-based choice. This includes a scrutiny of promotional claims for medicines because advertising claims can often make a treatment appear better than the evidence shows it to be. We are incorporating more information about the environmental impact of medicines as it becomes available.

  • Flea and tick products and the environment

  • Stop wasting money on medicines - and protect the environment

  • Deciding which medicines to stock in the practice

  • Grow your own Antimicrobial Stewardship culture

  • Parasiticide product ingredients - comparative table

Helpful Veterinary Prescriber free resources

Organisations and other resources

  • VetSustain. Supports veterinary professionals to become leading forces for sustainability.

  • Vetwork UK. A One Welfare / One Health charity founded by vets in 1997, currently focused on veterinary community responses to Global Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change.

  • One Health Breakthrough Partnership. A unique group of researchers, academics, water providers and regulators, environment agency representatives, and public health specialists from five organisations across Scotland working together to reduce pharmaceutical pollution in the environment through sustainable One Health innovation.

 


 

Veterinary Prescriberenvironment, One Health, pollution, medicines, veterinary medicines, parasiticides, sustainable, sustainability