A law banning household disposal of medications has been largely ignored, a survey finds. Research indicates that trace amounts of flushed drugs end up in human drinking water and the residents of British Columbia seem not to be concerned about this.

Half of British Columbians flush their unused medications or toss them into the garbage, despite bans on the practice in both Metro Vancouver and the City of Vancouver, according to a new, as-yet unreleased survey. 

Just as disturbing, 51 per cent of respondents to the survey, conducted by the Post-Consumer Pharmaceutical Stewardship Association, said they are unaware they should be returning unused and expired medications to pharmacies.

http://tinyurl.com/6xb4ksr

This is a clear indication of the lack of value in much waste management legislation that is predicated on ideology rather than source scientific thinking, or plain common sense.

What is the problem here:

• Too many prescriptions dished out by GPs and family physicians?
• Patients not taking all of their medicine?
• No better disposal option provided?

Of course, collecting unused medications is important, as it is for many OTC products also but there is almost no attention paid to this. But what is the issue about small quantities of left-over medication that could be reduced still further by better prescribing?

A recently published report has highlighted the wastage of prescription drugs in England. It was found that an estimated £300m a year were being wasted in medicines for primary and community care, the wasteful expenditure happens to amount to 4% of the total expenditure being incurred by the authorities. In the US, estimates of wastage are about 2.4% of total annual expenditure on prescribed medications.

Though, the researchers have highlighted the wastage of drugs through the study, yet they have also stated that the NHS does not face any major problem of drug wastage and that the problem of prescription medicines going to waste is not chronic in the NHS. The researchers stated that most of the medicines going to waste by the NHS were not a result of poor practices.

The researchers evaluating the prescription drug use of the NHS also stated that drugs were mostly wasted because of progression in illnesses and changes in the treatment being provided to patients. It was also stated that barely 30-50% wasteful expenditure could be avoided and that the rest was unavoidable and should be taken in its stride.

The study regarding the expenditure on drugs was an initiative of the Department of Health and was carried out by the York Health Economics Consortium. Apart from highlighting the useless expenditure being incurred by the services, the research has also recommended a few suggestions to decrease costs and increase savings.

The money saved could fund a better disposal option, including improvement in wastewater treatment facilities. That would deal with the small proportion of waste drugs tipped down the toilet – or provide an entirely better disposal route.

As always, those who worry about tablets down the toilet miss entirely the inevitability of excretion of the administered dose – or do they just pretend it doesn’t happen. 

Until the fate of all pharmaceuticals is properly acknowledged and wastewater treatment systems improved to advance from the Victorian waster treatment facilities that we still rely on, this problem will not go away.