Doctors need an environmental rating system for drugs

Van Hove and Leng raise some very valuable points on how the healthcare sector could reduce the environmental impact of metered dose inhaler propellants and anaesthetic gases.1

When buying lightbulbs, we look for A++ rating labels indicating low energy consumption. Drugs have no such rating. Although various matrices exist—such as the process mass intensity (the ratio of mass of raw materials to active pharmaceutical ingredient; typically 50-150)—they aren’t …