Review Potential Risk Assessment of Pharmaceutical Waste: Critical Review and Analysis

Abstract

Nowadays, pharmaceutical waste has been considered as an environmental micro pollutant due to its unavoidable occurrence in the ecosystem and has become a major health issue. Pharmaceutical products are formulated to therapeutically influence the physiological systems, however, their potential health concerns which contribute in increasing environmental pollution like other most potential environmental pollutants still needs to be taken under consideration by the healthcare professionals and environmental experts. So, the contamination of treated wastewater by pharmaceutical waste and outcome of these compounds in the agricultural environment are of increasing concern and potential risk for the ecosystem. With increasing utilization of treated wastewater and biosolids in agriculture, residues of pharmaceutical and personal care products in these reused resources may contaminate the food produced via plant uptake, constituting a route for human exposure. In this article, the occurrence and behavior of pharmaceuticals waste have been briefly reviewed. Moreover, major concerns associated with exposure of biological systems of both plant and animal origin to the pharmaceutical wastes contaminating the ecosystem have also been discussed here which concluded that standard procedures and protocols should be followed to dispose of the leftovers of pharmaceuticals and/or pharmaceutical wastes.