The roles of the medical community and "pseudopersistence" in drug contamination of the environment

What is it about?

There are numerous aspects to the practice of medicine that govern the entry of pharmaceuticals to the environment. Many of these aspects could be redesigned or optimized to reduce this contamination. One of the first - but brief - efforts to reach the medical community on the topic of pollution prevention was this article in The Lancet , immediately followed by a more comprehensive 2-part monograph in Environmental Health Perspectives.

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Why is it important?

This article also introduced the new term "pseudopersistence" to describe the phenomenon where chemicals that normally would not persist in the environment but which nonetheless exhibit a perpetual presence because they are continually replenished (primarily via introduction via sewage discharges or discharge of domestic animal wastes). Around the same time, this term was next used in another article - in Environmental Health Perspectives (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241487/).