IMPACT OF PHARMACEUTICAL POLLUTION ON NATURE AND ITS MANAGEMENT: A GLOBAL ALERT

Drugs taken by humans and animals find their way into rivers, lakes, and even drinking water and can have devastating effects on the environment. This review summarizes the research regarding pharmaceutical industry emissions and the health risks of pharmaceutical wastewater exposure.The present review is prepared by the extensive literature survey using different search engines like google.com, PubMed, SCOPUS, Medline, Ind Med, and the library of Galgotias University, Greater Noida. This review observed the consumption of medicinal products as one of the main sources of environmental contamination due to excretion (urine, feces) and improper disposal of unused or expired medicines (toilet, sink, litter). Some medicinal products, in particular anti-parasiticides, antimycotics, antibiotics, and estrogens, which can all have ecotoxicological effects, pose environmental risks in specific cases. The supervision of pharmaceutical waste poses a great challenge to policy planners, city administrators, medical personnel, and workers in the recycling industry. It is interdisciplinary, involving pharmacy, nursing, environment services, infection control, quality assurance, risk management, etc. According to the most recent data on water quality in India, the Yamuna at the Okhla and Nizamuddin bridges has the lowest quality and ranks eighth among rivers with the highest biochemical oxygen demand. A few examples of creative waste reduction initiatives that combine source reduction with reuse and recycling are presented for consideration in this regard. This paper concludes that the hazards and approaches to managing manufacturing-related and excretory-related environmental pollution can be reduced by some recent efforts by regulatory bodies around the world.