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“Homemade”: The Vicious Circle of Household Pharmaceutical Waste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2020

Katerina MITKIDIS Open the ORCID record for Katerina MITKIDIS [Opens in a new window]  and
Panagiotis MITKIDIS
Katerina MITKIDIS
Affiliation:
Department of Law, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; email: [email protected].
Panagiotis MITKIDIS
Affiliation:
Department of Management, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark and Center for Advanced Hindsight, Social Sciences Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC27701, USA.
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Abstract

Pharmaceutical science has provided humans with better and cheaper treatments. However, with improved access to medicines, the amount of pharmaceutical waste also grows. Pharmaceutical waste is regularly mismanaged by households, which is considerably and unnecessarily adding to the “pharmaceuticals in the environment” problem. Redesigning existing pharmaceutical takeback schemes and their regulation is a potential step towards a reduction of the problem. Interdisciplinary research between the fields of psychology, law, public health and medical science is necessary to tackle the issue and to design effective regulation steering responsible patient behaviours.

Type
Reports
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 693 - 697
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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