Pharmaceutical Excipients as a Proxy for Measuring Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: A Case Study with Polyethylene Glycol

Abstract

BARKLEY, RACHEL AUSERMAN. Pharmaceutical Excipients as a Proxy for Measuring Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: A Case Study with Polyethylene Glycol (Under the direction of Dr. Tamara Pandolfo). Pharmaceutical waste presents a problem where industry’s production of pharmaceuticals and their waste are fast out-pacing the regulations around this waste. In the past, previous methods have framed the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) as the most important ingredient which must be assessed to determine environmental risk. Here, a proxy is investigated as a means of quantifying the waste which communities may detect in wastewater. Pharmaceutical excipients are much more prevalent across manufacturing and therefore would provide the early datasets needed to assess how widespread these APIs could be. The framework uses polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a case study for how to implement this framework.