Title : Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: Boon or Bane
Abstract:
Pharmaceuticals are essential to ensure the high standards of human health and wellbeing. Extensive and uncontrolled usage under different classes such as antibiotics, analgesics, antipyretics, antidepressant, anticonvulsants, beta-blockers, and steroids, etc. pose high environmental and human health hazards when accumulated in the environment and ecosystem. In recent years pharmaceutical ingredient accumulation as emerging pollutants, intermediates and raw materials in the environment has received great attention all over the world due to their frequent detection in aquatic environments as subclasses of organic contaminants. Human health is directly or indirectly affected by pharmaceutical effluents especially in the vicinity of pharmaceutical industrial zones due to greater probability of contamination in areas of proximity including drinking water. Latest epidemiological studies predicted the possibility of relative risks of brain disorders increasing due to paracetamol exposure. The study of potential impacts of the toxicity of pharmaceutical byproducts on environment and human health is a matter of keen concern. Traditional treatment methods of wastewater are not sufficient for the eradication of active pharmaceutical ingredients and their metabolites from aquatic environments; whereas advanced treatment techniques are not sustainable because of energy consumption, high operational cost, efficiency and efficacy. Therefore, the appropriateness for extensive pharmaceutical production and its rational usage must be checked at the source including a shift to the production of better biodegradable pharmaceuticals in the long run for “sustainable pharmacy.”
Audience Take Away Notes:
- An understanding of the accumulation and toxicity associated with the overuse and release of pharmaceuticals in the environment
- Present and future challenges associated with their accumulation in different environmental matrices
- Knowledge of various sources of accumulation of commonly used drugs in environment, their serious post effects on health and remediation techniques
- Further research areas and treatment techniques for a safe and healthy environment and can work for developing sustainable and green environment
- As a career option for future research and teaching, both
