Review of environmental Risk assessment and prioritization stratégies for pharmaceuticals, review and discussion
Risque environnemental des médicaments à usage humain. Revue et discussion des stratégies de priorisation
Abstract
The objective of this work was to gather the information about the existing prioritization schemes implemented in different countries to propose lists of pharmaceutical of environmental concern. This document consists in three parts. In the first one, from a literature review we present the existing regulatory strategies and the previous work conducted with regard with environmental risk assessment (ERA) and/or prioritization of human pharmaceuticals. Most of the studies implemented in Europe use the EMEA guideline for ERA as a basis of their work. This review highlights the fact that chronic ecotoxicological data are lacking, which makes hard to implement accurate ERAs. The second part gives an example of such a prioritization strategy, using ecotoxicological, but also human pharmacological and physico-chemical data to bypass the lack of ecotoxicological data. As a result of this strategy, a priority list of pharmaceuticals (parent compounds and metabolites) relevant for the French situation is given. In the third part of third document, the different criteria used by several authors to build lists of priority pharmaceuticals, are discussed. Parameters influencing quantities of pharmaceuticals reaching the aquatic environment and reviewed and discussed and so the parameters proposed to assess the environmental biological effects of human pharmaceuticals on aquatic species.