Ecotoxic pollution from veterinary pharmaceuticals

Ecotoxic pollution from veterinary pharmaceuticalsNIGEL Taylor's opinion article 'From clinic to coastline' (VR, 17/24 October 2026, vol 199, p 385) highlights a major problem associated with human and veterinary medicine -ecotoxic pollution, particularly of the aquatic environment, with pharmaceuticals.Antibiotics, parasiticides, hormones and other endocrine-disrupting drugs, NSAIDs, psychoactive drugs and other drug classes each cause ecological harm.Taylor states that there are 'tight, international regulations which require mandatory ecotoxicology testing of all pharmaceutical products before they're approved for use'.Although a common belief, this is incorrect.All human and veterinary pharmaceuticals go through a two-phase 'environmental risk assessment' in the authorisation process.Phase I is an 'environmental impact assessment' which determines whether Phase II, an ecotoxicological assessment, is required.If Phase I concludes that the product's use will result in 'negligible' environmental exposure, no Phase II ecotoxicological assessment is carried out.Under the Veterinary Medicines Regulations (2013), in Phase I, veterinary medicines used to treat individual animals and pets (rather than herds or flocks of foodproducing animals) are typically assumed to result in negligible environmental exposure, so no Phase II ecological assessment is carried out.This outdated approach needs urgent change for those products that are used on large numbers of individual animals, such as pet parasiticides -as highlighted in the recent report 1 of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change's inquiry into pet pesticides (VR, 15-29 August 2026, vol 199, p 147).