Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment: Regulatory Drivers and Research Needs

Abstract

Abstract The potential effect of human and veterinary medicines and other personal care products on the environment has become an important topic over the past few years. Whilst an assessment of the potential environmental risks posed by new and existing pharmaceuticals has been required in the United States (U.S.) for a number of decades, in the European Union (EU) and Canada assessments have only been required in the last 5–10 years. In the U.S., guidance has been available since the early 1980s on the assessment of veterinary medicines, whereas only recently has detailed guidance become available on how to perform the risk assessment in other areas. For example, in Canada, new pharmaceuticals (and other substances including novel foods, food additives, human biologics and genetic therapies, medical devices, natural health products, veterinary drugs, cosmetics) have been required to be notified for an environmental assessment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA 1999) since 2001. The European Medicines Evaluation Authority (EMEA) has published guidelines for assessment of veterinary medicines in use in Europe. For veterinary medicines attempts are currently being made by the Veterinary International Co‐operation on Harmonisation (VICH) to harmonise these approaches. Generally, the current assessment approaches are tiered and initially involve a comparison of environmental concentrations with set trigger values. If the trigger values are exceeded then a formal assessment has to be performed requiring data on environmental fate and ecotoxicity. Concerns have been raised over the current approaches used in each of the assessment processes and there are a number of areas that warrant further research. This paper will provide an overview of the regulatory assessment of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and will expand on many of the topics for research in the future, and the role that QSAR scientists can play in this research will be highlighted.