Pharmaceuticals and Environment

Here you can find information about the environmental impact of human pharmaceuticals. You can search for a substance name. The environmental risk refers to the use of a pharmaceutical. The knowledge support is based on three sources:

1. environmental information from the European Medicines Agency's (EMA's) European Public Assessment Reports (EPARs) with risk assessed from a European perspective
2. environmental information on Fass.se and risk based on the total sales of an active substance in Sweden during a given year
3. environmental risk assessments for certain substances based on concentrations measured in the environment in Sweden and effect studies.

Based on the two first-mentioned sources, environmental information is missing for many medicinal products. The database is based on Region Stockholm's work in Sweden and may mean, for example, that information about the Wise list, the formulary of recommended essential medicines for the entire Stockholm healthcare region, has been included.

The knowledge support Pharmaceuticals and Environment applies its own environmental criteria, which differ from the formal ERA system used by EMA/CHMP, and therefore cannot be directly applied in regulatory authorisation processes.

Information about the classification

In a document there is information about the classification of the environmental hazard and the environmental risk. The classification of the risk is usually based on theoretical calculations of the risk. For more information see Classification.

For some substances there is also a risk assessment made on the basis of concentrations measured in the environment in Sweden and efficacy studies with high quality. These assessments are presented in the documents for the substances and are made by independent ecotoxicological expertise. Continuous work is underway to provide more substance documents with this type of environmental information and also present comparisons of environmental risk between substances intended for the same indication. Based on this type of risk assessment, a table of environmentally hazardous drugs Pdf, 41 kB. was developed within the framework of Region Stockholm's environmental program 2017–2021.

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