Many people, to get rid of expired or unused medicines, prefer to throw them in the garbage or down the toilet instead of leaving them in the designated medicine depots. It is behavior that should absolutely be avoided, as underlined by Professor Ilaria Capua. Here are the reasons.
At the end of the theatrical show “The Words of Circular Health” held on April 4 at the Sapienza University of Rome, the virologist and essayist Ilaria Capua reminded that each of us can make our own (important) contribution to protecting theenvironment and the Health, firmly interconnected. The scientist underlined that, in this regard, there is a behavior absolutely to be avoided, that is throw away antibiotics and other drugs In the water or in the garbage. In many, especially after the expiration, instead of leaving them in the designated drug stores (available in many but not all pharmacies), they prefer to get rid of them quickly by flushing the toilet, or throwing them in the unsorted waste. These are gestures that may appear “harmless” to some, but in reality they are among the most impactful of all in terms of individual responsibility.
As explained by Professor Capua, in fact, the drugs disposed of in this way end up in the groundin seawhere in addition to pollute ecosystems they end up coming back like a boomerang, for example through the food chain, the fresh water we drink. Exposure to small – but chronic – doses of active principles present in medicines, which are difficult to degrade in the environment, can have harmful effects on our health and that of other animals, plants and microorganisms, but this is not the main danger, but rather the antibiotic resistance. Bacteria continuously exposed to these medicines dispersed in the environment can become resistant, for example through the combination of genetic mutations and natural replication processes. Some bacteria may present random mutations capable of protecting them from antibiotic molecules; those that survive environmental exposure can continue to replicate, giving rise to colonies of so-called “superbugs” which are no longer killed by taking antibiotics. Resistance can also be catalyzed byimproper use of these drugs, for example by deliberately taking them without any indication from the doctor (remember that antibiotics are useless against viruses) or by not adhering to the prescribed cycle.
Bacteria like Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and several species of Enterobacteriaceae – like theEscherichia coli and exponents of the genres Klebsiella, Lockdown And Proteus – have been included in a sort of blacklist by the World Health Organization (WHO) because they represent a threat concrete for the public healthprecisely in light of antibiotic resistance. These microorganisms, extremely widespread in hospital environments, have become resistant to various types of antibiotics such as carbapenems, macrolides, penicillins, fluoroquinolones and others. As told by Ilaria Capua during her show, it was true Sir Alexander Fleming – discoverer of penicillin – during the withdrawal of Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (1945) to alert public opinion and the scientific community to the risks of the improper use of antibiotics, precisely because it would have favored this resistance.
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In Italy this is a particularly serious problem, for several reasons. Suffice it to say that, recently, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) criticized Italy because doctors prescribe too many antibiotics. According to 2017 data, they were prescribed in our country 28 doses per thousand inhabitants for primary care, compared to an average of 18 doses in OECD countries. Furthermore, even more disturbingly, in Italy they occur approximately 11,000 deaths per year due to superbug infections, i.e. a third of the approximately 33,000 that occur throughout Europe (1.3 million worldwide). Most of the Italian victims gets infected in hospital or in other health care facilities. If this were not enough, the Association of Pharmaceutical Companies (Farmindustria) estimated that in our country antibiotic resistance will cause a real massacre by 2050, with well 450,000 victims. In light of these alarming data, we can only reiterate the advice given by Professor Capua during the theater show, based on her book of the same name: do not throw antibiotics into the environment and use them only when requested by the doctor, adhering perfectly to the prescription.
