University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines

Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

PERFORMANCE INNOVATIVE TASK AND

CLASS STANDING PERFORMANCE:

PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Presented to the Faculty of the

Department of Chemistry
College of Science and Mathematics
University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines

In Partial Fulfilment of the requirements in

CHEM 327: ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY

GROUP 4:
JOHN NICHOLSON VUELBAN
MARIA LEONORA YAMUT
JEAN CAÑETE
KENT LAWRENCE CALUNSAG
JC CABISADA

BS CHEM 3H1

APRIL 18, 2023

 University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

INTRODUCTION

Pharmaceutical industry has played a vital role in human development by

improving the quality of life, examples of these are the development of penicillin,
insulin, smallpox and polio vaccines, aspirin, morphine, oral contraceptives and
digoxin and many more. The major manufactured groups in this industry includes
antibiotics, synthetic drugs, vitamins, synthetic hormones, glandular products,
vaccines, and sera. In manufacturing these products, it undergoes principal steps
such as (1) preparation of process intermediates; (2) introduction of functional
groups; (3) coupling and esterification; (4) separation processes such as washing
and stripping; and (5) purification of the final product. All of these steps are under the
manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and the latter process
involves conversion of these active products into suitable administration
(International Finance Corporation, 2007).

Pharmaceutical industry is significant to our survival, but it must also be

acknowledged that pharmaceuticals and their packaging have a significant negative
impact on the environment. The negative impact of pharmaceuticals on the
environment originates from three sources; the carbon footprint, the direct chemical
impact on the environment of pharmaceuticals itself; and the pharmaceutical’s
packaging waste (Kummerer and Hempel, 2010). The size of the carbon footprint of
pharmaceuticals in the public hospital sector is significant and although they appear
in very low concentrations in the environment (Cunningham et al., 2009; Fent et al.,
2006) they still have the potential to exert cumulative effect on humans (Ruhoy and
Daughton, 2008), and a significant negative impact on wildlife (Arnold et al., 2013;
Jones et al., 2003). For instance, veterinary use of diclofenac, a widely-available
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) has resulted in the virtual extinction of
three vulture species to the most severe category of global extinction risk (Swan et
al., 2006). Pharmaceutical packaging waste is comprised of several components –
the original container (the bottle, box or vial that contains or contained the
pharmaceutical), cardboard outers, paper from consumer information leaflets and/or
product information for health professionals, shrink wrap, foil strips for individual oral
dose formulations, cartons and wooden pallets. WHO (2011) classifies unwanted

1
 University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

pharmaceuticals and their original containers as contaminated waste requiring high

temperature incineration to minimize the risk of pharmaceuticals entering the natural
environment.

Due to growing demand for pharmaceutical drugs, huge amounts of

environmental discharges have also been generated and as a result it has greatly
exceeded toxic threshold concentration for various chemical by-products (Larsson,
2014). Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulate matter (PM) are usually
waste products from drug manufacturing which has also been regarded as principal
air pollutants in the environment. Liquid effluents were produced as a result of
equipment cleaning after batch operation. The composition of these effluents varies
depending on the product manufactured, materials used in the process, and other
process details (International Finance Corporation, 2007). Pharmaceuticals leaving
sewerage treatment plants can end up in water for agricultural and landscape re-use
and potentially in recycled drinking water for human and animal consumption and
may affect both the health of aquatic organisms and the health of humans as Jobling
et al.’s (1998) research demonstrated.

BODY

Pharmaceutical Plastic Wastes

Medical plastics are one of the widely used substances in Pharmaceutical

Industries. Personal protective equipment like masks, face shields, and safety
goggles are composed of plastics, namely polycarbonate and polyethylene
terephthalate (Dharmaraj et al. 2021). During the pandemic, 89 million masks, 30
million gowns, 1.59 million goggles, and 76 million gloves are required every month,
according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A tremendous waste to dispose
of, and in Asia alone, they generated around 16,500 tons/per day of medical waste
(S. Sangkham, 2020). Managing those plastic waste is crucial as our environmental
and health safety depends on how we do it.

Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) is composed of Chlorine, Carbon, and Hydrogen

in 57%, 38%, and 5% of its mass. Incinerating PVC leads to the release of Chlorine
into the atmosphere, causing the formation of acid rain. Burning PVC can also affect
2
 University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

the respiratory system since it causes the emission of carbon dioxide, hydrogen
chloride, carbon monoxide, and phosgene. Despite its toxicity, there were possible
methods to apply that can reduce the harmful chemicals of PVC before incineration.
Possible procedures include dechlorination using base-reducing acid sodium
hydroxide and hydrothermal carbonization. Feasible products of recycled PVC
include traffic cones, floor tiles, garden hoses, etc. (A. Merrington, 2017).

Polyethylene (PE) results from the polymerization reaction of ethylene

monomer and has a chemical formula of (C 2H4)n. The substance is known for being
light, flexible, chemically inert, and resistant to organic solvents. In medicine, they
used PE for making catheters, implants, and polyethylene cups for joint replacement
(N.C. Paxton et al., 2019). The common environmental issue regarding PE is when
dumped into landfills, it undergoes a natural light oxidation process where ultraviolet
rays fragment some of the C-H bonds, causing it to release into the environment and
resulting in the generation of greenhouse gasses. However, on the positive side, PE
has potential applications in the textile industry. New research shows the possibility
of waste PE being converted into a wearable textile that absorbs and evaporates
water more rapidly than commonly used textiles (M. Alberghini et al., 2021).

Pharmaceutical Chemical Wastes

Most chemical pollutant that is striking in the pharmaceutical industry are

APIs. It is released in vast amounts into the environment from both drug
manufacturing and human consumption, wherein between 30 to 90% of urine
excretion still contain these active substances after oral intake according to the
European Environmental Bureau. Around 600 different APIs were detected in the
environment which poses great risk in other organisms such as Vibrio fischeri, a
bioluminescent bacteria which showed a symbiotic relationship to most marine animals,
exhibited decrease of population due to the toxic presence of high concentrations of
ibuprofen, azithromycin, and triclosan with endpoints of 6.5 × 10−5 mol L -1,
30.26 × 10−5 mol L-1, and 0.0155 × 10−5 mol L-1, respectively (Dong et al., 2019;
European Environmental Bureau, n.d.). Accumulation of these notable antibiotics
inhibit the presence of most bacteria in the environment and can potentially induce
3
 University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

antibiotic resistant bacterium which could wreck havoc to humans and the
environment.

Numerous pharmaceutical chemical wastes appear on specific Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) lists of hazardous wastes (VLS
Environmental Solutions, 2023). Chemical waste can mix with liquid materials and
create chemical reactions that may produce a toxic environment. Wastewater
discharges in pharmaceutical industries may contain heavy metals like mercury (0.1-
0.4 mg L-1), cadmium (10-600 mg L-1), isomers of hexachlorocyclohexane, 1,2-
dichloroethane, and various solvents (International Finance Corporation, 2007).
Furthermore, these hazardous chemical wastes that the pharmaceutical companies
produce also contains Acetone, Methanol, Toluene, Benzene and more. The
composition and identity of chemical wastes varies on each pharmaceutical products
produced. It is essential that these wastes should be treated quickly. In order to
convert these chemical waste into usable products, various companies use the
waste-to-energy technique wherein the disposed chemicals waste are allowed to
react safely to generate usable energy simultaneously that they can use in their
companies.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

Currently, pharmaceutical compounds are used for a variety of beneficial

purposes, however, pharmaceutical industries are also releasing vast amounts of
plastic waste and highly toxic contaminants that could affect both humans and the
environment. As per studies, several of these pharmaceutical plastic and chemical
wastes showed potential in terms of being recycled. PVC and PE, a common
pharmaceutical wastes can possibly be recycled to reusable materials. PVC can be
recycled into traffic cones, floor tiles and garden hoses. While PE can be potentially
converted into a wearable textile. Moreover, chemical wastes are converted to
usable products by waste-to-energy technique. Lastly, sincere efforts are expected in
the future to solve this ongoing problem in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure a
safe and healthy environment for future generations.

4
 University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines
Alubijid | Cagayan de Oro | Claveria | Jasaan | Oroquieta | Panaon

REFERENCES

A. Merrington (2017). Recycling of plastics. Appl. Plast. Eng. Handb., Elsevier, pp. 167-189.

Dong, Y., Fang, Z., Xu, Y., Wang, Q., & Zou, X. (2019). The toxic effects of three active
pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) with different efficacy to Vibrio fischeri. Emerging
Contaminants, 5, 297–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emcon.2019.08.004

Larsson, D. G. J. (2014). Pollution from drug manufacturing: review and perspectives.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369(1656),
20130571–20130571. doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0571

N.C. Paxton, M.C. Allenby, P.M. Lewis, M.A. Woodruff (2019). Biomedical applications of
polyethylene. Eur. Polym. J., 118, pp. 412-428, 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2019.05.037

M. Alberghini, S. Hong, L.M. Lozano, V. Korolovych, Y. Huang, F. Signorato, S.H. Zandavi, C.

Fucetola, I. Uluturk, M.Y. Tolstorukov (2021). Sustainable polyethylene fabrics with
engineered moisture transport for passive cooling. Nat. Sustain. (2021), pp. 1-10

S. Dharmaraj, V. Ashokkumar, S. Hariharan, A. Manibharathi, P.L. Show, C.T. Chong, and C.

Ngamcharussrivichai (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic face mask waste: a blooming
threat to the marine environment.

S. Sangkham (2020). Face mask and medical waste disposal during the novel COVID-19
pandemic in Asia Case Stud. Chem. Environ. Eng., 2, p. 100052,
10.1016/j.cscee.2020.100052

The problem of pharmaceutical pollution - EEB - The European Environmental Bureau. (n.d.).
https://eeb.org/the-problem-of-pharmaceutical-pollution/

VLS Environmental Solutions. (2023, February 10). “Types of Pharmaceutical Waste and
How to Dispose them”. Retrieved from: https://www.vlses.com/2022/10/31/types
-of-pharmaceutical-waste/