Environmental impact of pharmaceuticals and personal care products
effects of drugs on the environment
The environmental effects of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) has been of concern since at least the 1990s. PPCPs include substances used by individuals for personal health or cosmetic reasons and the products used by agribusiness to boost growth or health of livestock. More than twenty million tons of PPCPs are produced every year. The European Union has declared that pharmacological residues with the potential for contamination of water and the soil are "priority substances".[3]
PPCPs have been detected in waters throughout the world. More research is needed to evaluate the risks of toxicity, persistence, and bioaccumulation, but current research shows that personal care products affect the environment and other species, such as coral reefs and fish. PPCPs encompass environmental persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPPs) and are one type of persistent organic pollutants. They are not removed in conventional sewage treatment plants but require a fourth treatment stage which not many plants have.
In 2022, the most comprehensive study of pharmacological pollution of the world's rivers showed that it threatens "environmental and/or human health in more than a quarter of the studied locations". It investigated 1052 sampling sites along 258 rivers in 104 countries, representing pollution of rivers serving 470 million people. It showed that "the most contaminated sites were in low- to middle-income countries and were associated with areas with poor wastewater and waste management infrastructure and pharmaceutical product manufacture" and listed the most frequently detected and concentrated pharmaceutical products.
The public source identifies “Environmental impact of pharmaceuticals and personal care products” as effects of drugs on the environment. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Environmental, impact and pharmaceuticals.
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This entry incorporates text from “Environmental impact of pharmaceuticals and personal care products” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.