[Pharmwaste] Pharma May Pay to Dispose of Your Old Medicines

[Tenace, Laurie]

http://www.baycitizen.org/health/story/pharma-may-pay-dispose-old-medicines/


Pharma May Pay to Dispose of Your Old Medicines

Faced with the prospect of being forced to pay for the disposal of unused medications, pharmaceutical companies in San Francisco appear to be getting on board with an effort to create a voluntary cleanup program.

The Board of Supervisors had been scheduled to vote Tuesday on the San Francisco Safe Drug Disposal Ordinance, which would require pharmaceutical companies who sell their products in the city to pay for a program to help consumers dispose of unused drugs. If the measure were to be approved, San Francisco would become the first city in the country to create such a mandatory program.

Instead, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who authored the legislation, announced at Tuesday's meeting that he'd recently met with "several dozen representatives of the pharmaceutical industry" in an attempt to create a voluntary pilot program. The supervisors agreed to put off the issue for two weeks to allow the negotiations to proceed.

Under one of the plans being discussed, one pharmacy in each of the city's supervisorial districts would voluntarily collect unused drugs, as long as they're not controlled substances like oxycontin, according to Melanie Nutter, director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment, who is participating in the talks. Five police stations in the city would also participate, since they would be able to take controlled substances.

The pilot program in San Francisco would be largely financed by the pharmaceutical industry, but would cost the city some money because Environment Department staff would spend time administering it.

San Mateo County currently offers drug disposal at police departments in more than a dozen cities, including Atherton and South San Francisco. That program has collected 15 tons of old drugs over the past four years at a cost of just $60,000, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. No other Bay Area county has a year-round drug take-back program.

The goal of such programs is to help prevent both accidental poisonings and environmental contamination from leftover drugs. Nationally, an estimated 71,000 children are seen in emergency rooms each year because of medication poisonings, unrelated to recreational drug use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 80 percent of those poisoning occur because an unsupervised child found and consumed medicine.

When people do try to get rid of their old drugs, they often don't know what to do with them. Wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to filter out medicines, so drugs flushed down the toilet or poured down sinks can end up contaminating local waterways, including San Francisco Bay. When pills are thrown in the trash, they can leach into the environment via landfills.

"We want to protect the natural environment and our water by making sure pharmaceuticals don't end up there," Nutter said.

For the past year and a half, San Francisco has offered residents the opportunity to mail away their expired antibiotics and unused Prozac for incineration. So far, about 9,000 envelopes have been distributed, but each one costs the city $3.75. "It's a very costly program," Nutter said. But the popularity of the program - which was not widely publicized - has left the city looking for a more sustainable solution.

"San Francisco is surrounded by water and you've got a very environmentally aware public," said Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, who has advised San Francisco on drug disposal. "You've got the public demanding a program, because they're concerned about their water quality, but there's no money."

The pharmaceutical industry has made clear it would be loath to conform to a variety of local ordinances.

"In discussions with San Francisco officials, we've offered to assist them with an interim pilot program to help us learn more about proper disposal of unused medicines before implementation of federal regulations," reads a statement e-mailed to The Bay Citizen from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is currently working to create national rules that "will provide uniform nationwide standards and will allow us to avoid a confusing patchwork quilt of differing state and local pharmaceutical take-back programs," read the statement. The new guidelines are not expected to be completed for months.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will hear more about the issue on Dec. 7.

Laurie Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Waste Reduction Section
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Rd., MS 4555
Tallahassee FL 32399-2400
P: 850.245.8759
F: 850.245.8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us

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