European regulators have given their backing to a new eco-friendly inhaler that could help curb health care’s climate impact.
Drugmaker AstraZeneca said the new inhaler has a fraction of the carbon footprint of its existing model, which uses a gas propellant to deliver a dose of medicine to patients and is already available in the European Union for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
These types of inhalers may be small, but they pack a powerful punch, producing the same type of greenhouse gas as air conditioning and heat pumps. In the United Kingdom, they cause 3 per cent of the National Health Service’s (NHS) overall carbon emissions, according to Asthma + Lung UK.
Many of these gases are now being phased out in the EU for environmental reasons, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Its advisory committee issued a positive opinion of the new inhaler on Friday.
Other inhalers that do not use gas propellants are already available, and AstraZeneca’s new model has a similarly low carbon footprint.
The new option “means patients and their clinicians now don’t need to feel like they have to choose between the most appropriate treatment and the planet,” Pablo Panella, AstraZeneca's senior vice president of global respiratory and immunology, said in a written comment to Euronews Health.
The United Kingdom signed off on the new inhaler in May, and it is under review in other countries.
AstraZeneca said it plans to transition its inhalers to the new model across the EU in the coming months, and that it hopes to roll the model out worldwide by 2030.
The EMA said it “works the same way and gives the same results in the lungs and the body [as] the product currently on the market”.
Updated June 25: This story has been updated to clarify the new inhaler's availability worldwide.
