Quantification and management of pollution load in pharmaceutical industry

A pharmaceutical industry manufacturing antibiotics has proposed to manufacture new antibiotics to stand prevailing market demands. The change in production may correspondingly change nature and quantity of pollutants emitted and cause adverse environmental impacts. Assessment of pollutant load has been carried out in this study. The study is termed as pollution load assessment (PLA) which involves assessment of pollution load due to existing emissions and its comparison with the computed pollution loads due to new products. The study indicated change is the quantity of production of new antibiotics in such a way that environmental pollution before and after the proposed production would remain same. The PLA study has inferred that there could be no additional pollution load to ambient environment due to the proposed change in production. Environmental Management Plan (EMP) including improvements such as better techniques for recycle, reuse, mitigation measures etc. have been suggested to control the pollution load to the existing level.