Ecopharmacovigilance: Need of the hour

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals in the environment have the potential to be hazardous to human beings. With each passing day it is becoming a major source of concern. Due to recent findings showing the availability of pharmaceutical components in the environment, particularly in ground water bodies, pharmaceuticals have gained a growing amount of attention from worldwide health regulatory bodies and have become one of the most significant water pollutants. The aim of this article is to review the environmental hazards of pharmaceuticals that have been reported in various literature sources to promote awareness on safe usage of medicines, to increase pharmaceutical manufacturers’ knowledge on environmental safety aspects and to arrest the attention of pharmacovigilance practitioners to some of the emerging problems caused by medicines. Pharmaceutical waste has been a source of huge concern amongst environmental scientists. Pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacovigilance scientists should invest more attention to these increasing environmental concerns caused by medications. Ecopharmacovigilance is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the science and activities concerned with the detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse events or other related problems caused by pharmaceuticals in the environment that affect people and other animal species. This review is an attempt to compile information on Ecopharmacovilance, with an emphasis on the Indian perspective.