Doctors and other healthcare workers have long known that patients do not always take medicine exactly as prescribed. Many people do not finish their prescriptions, which leaves some of the drugs left over. In addition, pharmacists create pharmaceutical waste when preparing prescriptions. These leftover pharmaceuticals must be disposed of with care, following proper procedures to prevent the drugs from contaminating the soil or groundwater. Our team at Sunbelt Medical Services has extensive experience in pharmaceutical waste disposal, and in this article, we will go over a couple of reasons why it is so important.
- Environmental Hazards – As we alluded to above, one of the main reasons why pharmaceutical waste is so important is because pharmaceuticals can contaminate the environment if not disposed of properly. If someone were to throw their remaining pills into the regular trash, then those pills would break down in the soil and the drug would leach into the groundwater. Proper pharmaceutical waste disposal procedures are designed to prevent this from happening, thereby making sure no one is exposed to drug-contaminated water.
- Wastewater Management – Pharmaceutical waste disposal also includes the management of the wastewater used in the preparation of various medications. In the same way that throwing pills into a landfill leads drugs to seep into the soil, pouring wastewater used to prepare medications down the drain into the local water system would contaminate the rest of the community’s water. Our team has the right experience to help set up and maintain separate plumbing and water treatment systems to ensure this does not happen.