E-DRUG: The high environmental price of cheap essential drugs
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I came across a posting in Alternet which may be of interest to
e-druggers. We consider ourselves lucky to have such cheap essential
drugs available to us - but there is a cost. This article reports on
findings of a Swedish university study of pharmaceutical pollution in
India. The abstract of the journal article itself is below the Alternet
posting. If anyone wants a pdf file of the journal article, I would be
happy to email it to them. [If so, then email Susan directly, do not reply to E-drug. Moderator]
Susan Foster, PhD
susan.foster@tufts.edu
Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics
and Boston University School of Public Health
Toxic Waste Exposure Is the High Price Developing Countries Pay to Produce Our Medicine
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
Posted on August 27, 2007, Printed on December 3, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59986/
Hazardous imports have been the top story on the evening news for weeks
now. But the poor quality of some foreign-made products is only half the
story. Before we ever see those products, manufacturing plants in the
countries of origin can pose an even greater danger to human and
ecological health.
Take India, which is now our biggest foreign source of pharmaceuticals.
A just-published study by Sweden's Gothenborg University shows that,
whatever the quality of the drugs being shipped out of India, they are
leaving behind a toxic mess. Even after days in a water-treatment plant,
effluents discharged into streams and rivers in one Indian region show
concentrations of antibiotics and other drugs at 100 to 30,000 times the
levels considered safe.
In a 2005 story <http://www.alternet.org/environment/20964>, I described
the devastation of water, land and human health that I saw in the area
around Patancheru, India -- damage that local villagers, doctors and
environmentalists attribute to pollution from the 90 or more bulk-drug
factories in the vicinity. State law says that the factories must haul
their toxic wastes to an effluent treatment plant run by Patancheru
Enviro Tech, Ltd. (PETL) on a tributary of the Nakkavagu rivulet. The
treatment plant's outflow into the Nakkavagu (which waters a valley
dotted with 14 villages) has often been found to carry industrial
pollutants at many times the statutory limits.
Now the Swedish study, recently published online by the /Journal of
Hazardous Materials/ (abstract is posted below) has found
record-breaking concentrations of 11 drugs - antibiotics and treatments
for high blood pressure, ulcers and allergies - in wastes flowing from
the PETL plant.
Noting that "to the best of our knowledge, the concentrations of these
11 drugs were all above the previously highest values [ever] reported in
any sewage effluent," the authors singled out the antibiotic
Ciprofloxacin (Cipro), which flows out of the plant at the rate of 100
pounds of active ingredient per day. That, say the authors, "is
equivalent to the total amount consumed in Sweden (population 9 million)
over an average five-day period"!
Concentrations of five other antibiotics were found at levels that are
toxic to plants, blue-green algae and a range of bacteria. And before it
leaves the facility, the stew of drugs is mixed with human sewage,
creating perfect conditions for breeding dangerous, antibiotic-resistant
bacteria.
In June, a front-page story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061601295.html
by Washington Post reporter Marc Kaufman revealed that there are
virtually no controls on the quality of drugs being imported from India.
He wrote that India and China together supply as much as 20 percent of
the U.S. market for generic and over-the-counter drugs and 40 percent of
all bulk drugs used here, and that the two nations' share may rise to 80
percent by 2022. India's share of the U.S. market in 2006 was $800
million, exceeding China's.
According to Kaufmann, the FDA conducted 1,222 quality-assurance
inspections of domestic drug-manufacturing plants in 2006. That same
year, the agency carried out only 32 inspections of Indian drug plants,
mostly to check on new import applications, not for quality control by
existing suppliers. And "on-the-ground inspections of Indian and Chinese
plants remain rare and relatively brief and are always scheduled in
advance, unlike the surprise visits that FDA inspectors pay to domestic
manufacturers." There is no indication that FDA inspectors pay any
attention to environmental impacts of the plants.
The Swedish researchers calculated that if the quantities of
pharmaceuticals they detected being released from the Patancheru
treatment facility in a single 24-hour period could be collected and
sold in Sweden, they would fetch an amount approaching $200,000, even in
generic form. But, they wrote, because the production costs are so much
lower than the eventual retail price, it is cheaper for companies to
waste the drugs than to invest in pollution control.
When I returned to India earlier this year and checked on the current
state of pollution in Patancheru, I was told that burgeoning export-drug
production is putting more pressure than ever on the system.
Meteorologist Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy -- a former chief technical
advisor to the United Nations and now a campaigner for tougher policies
on pollution in the Patancheru area -- told me that the sheer quantity
of drugs that plants are producing means that they pump out far more
waste water than the treatment plant can handle.
The state permits each company to dispose of only a certain amount of
water per day, and if its chemical concentration is too high, the
company is fined. But, said Dr. Reddy, "The fines are peanuts to them."
And, of course, the effluent is not even tested for presence of
pharmaceuticals. The bulk-drug plants are often producing at two, three,
sometimes ten times the permitted capacity.
Reddy has watched as tanker trucks full of effluent from drug factories
are turned away by the water treatment plant because their company's
daily quota has been exceeded. He says that rather than returning to the
factory, the trucks will often head out into the countryside to dump
their load. Those wastes would contain, if anything, higher
concentrations of pharmaceuticals than seen in the Swedish study.
So when we're raising the alarm over hazardous toys, food and drugs
imported from China, India or other countries, it's important to
remember that it's our own insatiable demand for those cheap products
that pushes manufacturers into using slapdash practices -- and that it's
people living and working downstream or downwind from the foreign
factories who could well be paying the highest price of all.
Stan Cox <t.stan@cox.net> is a plant breeder and writer in
Salina, Kan.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/59986
*Journal of Hazardous Materials*
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03043894
Volume 148, Issue 3
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=PublicationURL&_tockey=%23TOC%235253%232007%23998519996%23667064%23FLA%23&_cdi=5253&_pubType=J&_auth=y&_acct=C000014058&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=201547&md5=f284472fffcd8b57b7e04bec9581f43c
30 September 2007, Pages 751-755 **
Short communication
Effluent from drug manufactures contains extremely high levels of
pharmaceuticals
D.G. Joakim Larsson^a
Cecilia de Pedro^a
and Nicklas Paxeus^b
^a Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, The Sahlgrenska Academy at
Gothenborg University, Gothenborg, Sweden
^b Environmental Chemistry, Gryaab AB, Gothenborg, Sweden
Available online 6 July 2007.
Abstract
It is generally accepted that the main route for human pharmaceuticals
to the aquatic environment is via sewage treatment plants receiving
wastewater from households and hospitals. We have analysed
pharmaceuticals in the effluent from a wastewater treatment plant
serving about 90 bulk drug manufacturers in Patancheru, near Hyderabad,
India—a major production site of generic drugs for the world market. The
samples contained by far the highest levels of pharmaceuticals reported
in any effluent. The high levels of several broad-spectrum antibiotics
raise concerns about resistance development. The concentration of the
most abundant drug, ciprofloxacin (up to 31,000 μg/L) exceeds levels
toxic to some bacteria by over 1000-fold. The results from the present
study call for an increased focus on the potential release of active
pharmaceutical ingredients from production facilities in different regions.
*Keywords: *Pharmaceuticals; Antibiotics; Environment; Effluent; Toxicity
--
[There is also an article by Stan Cox here:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=class&type=122&class=21&printsafe=1. Moderator]