The environmental impacts of tenofovir disoproxil

Research highlights

• "In this work, we report the first-order analysis of the pharmaceutical supply chain by developing a framework to systematically assess the sustainability implications of worldwide distributed pharmaceutical manufacturing, packaging, consumption, and disposal, identify environmental hotspots, and analyze the parameter variations and supply chain dynamics."
• "As an intensively used but life-saving antiretroviral drug whose historical trend of dominating the HIV drug market is expected to continue in the near future, the case of tenofovir disoproxil (TD) fumarate (TDF), an API for treating HIV, is presented by applying the framework."
• "The scope of this study focuses on a “cradle-to-grave” system boundary, with life cycle stages of raw material production, API synthesis, galenic formulation, solvent recovery and waste treatment, packaging, transportation, and EOL."
• "Specifically, the life cycle carbon footprint and CED are 0.177 kg CO2 equiv and 3.08 MJ, respectively, for one tablet containing 300 mg of TDF with the effect of treating one average HIV-1-infected patient daily."
• "API production dominates all impact categories with 62–99% of contribution to the life cycle environmental impacts. For most impact categories, tenofovir preparation contributes the most, accounting for 97% of ozone depletion and 47% of particulate matter formation. "

Abstract

Sustained demands for pharmaceutical commodities are continuously created due to economic development and the rapidly aging world population. However, the climate and environmental implications of globalized pharmaceutical manufacturing have not been sufficiently understood to inform the integration of key learnings into sustainability practices. Here, we systematically study the environmental impacts of the pharmaceutical supply chain and identify hotspots through a novel analysis framework. Using the case of an HIV drug, tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, we demonstrate that improving the solvent recovery rate, innovating the adenine synthesis route, optimizing the adenine yield, and substituting non-renewable heating fuels with renewables can help mitigate the carbon footprint and cumulative energy demand by up to 45%. Carefully optimized pharmaceutical supply chain networks can result in a reduction of up to 9.3% in the life cycle carbon footprint. The majority of carbon emission reductions could be attributed to manufacturing and formulating in regions with deeply decarbonized power grids, rather than reducing the transportation distances between production or formulation sites and raw material or demand zones. Pharmaceutical manufacturers could be incentivized to purchase renewable electricity and source climate pledge friendly raw materials to reduce their carbon footprint.

Methods & Results

For a complete summary of this data source and to see reported environmental impact values for studied products and activities, explore the HealthcareLCA Database.

Citation

Tao Y, Zhu S, Smith J, Lakhani N, You F. Environmental Sustainability of the Globalized Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: The Case of Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate. ACS sustainable chemistry & engineering. 2023;11(17):6510–22.