14th November 2023
17
concrete-online.co.uk/category/science/ | @ConcreteUEA
Climate Corner: Drugs of Waste- How Your Unused Medicine Destroys the Environment
Photo: Unsplash
Elena Timoshenko Science Writer
We have all heard about the importance of pollution, with the usual topic of conversation touching on carbon emissions, plastic, and fossil fuels. Meanwhile, chemical drug pollution is out of the spotlight, secretly leading to tragic environmental consequences. In the UK unused prescription drugs cost around 300 million pounds every year. An unnecessary sum spent by your healthcare. And it’s not all about money. According to the PABG in 2021, 1 in every 10 people in the UK flush expired medicine down the toilet, with another 41% throwing medicine out with their general waste. Those wasted drugs include everything from painkillers, to contraceptives, to antibiotics,
and even to antidepressants. When those drugs are washed down the drains, they inevitably end up in natural water resources, such as lakes, streams and rivers, with a gross 80% of pharmaceutical pollution coming from domestic sources. Medicine-water pollution causes the extinction of flora and fauna near “drugged” bodies of water. They poison plants that absorb the toxic water, cause uncontrolled growth of some aquatic species while killing others, produce skewed sex ratios in newborn aquatic animals and destroy whole
“... 1 in every 10 people in the UK flush expired medicine down the toilet...”
food chains and ecosystems. The expired drugs must also not be disposed of as general waste. Although the risk of water contamination is lower, those drugs can end up buried in the soil, burned, or found by other people, animals, or even kids. Now you may ask yourself: “But what about water filtration?” Well… it doesn’t help. The wastewater filtration system is designed to filter out organic matter. Meaning that most of our synthetic drugs are not filtered out and move directly into aquatic ecosystems. Another issue with water pollution is that inevitably, because of the poor filtration systems, some of
those drugs can still end up in drinking water, making every one of us consume some of the secondhand drugs through tap water. The government has long been aware of those effects, however it has found itself “on the end of the pipe” with the difficulty of imposing proper laws to control domestic waste, ensuring safe disposal. At this point, I believe you are likely asking yourself: “But why can’t drugs just be recycled?” It is not a widely known fact, but once a drug has left the Pharmacy, it can’t be reused. The returned medicines, even if are unused, unopened, and not out-of-date, must be disposed of by law. You may be wondering, what
can I do now? I would like to direct you to the Medical Waste Campaign, which is active allaround the UK working towards informing people of the ways to properly dispose of medicine. Here are 3 things that you can do in your daily life to decrease drug pollution. 1: Only order/ buy medicine that you need. You can consult with your GP or pharmacist, and check if you already have that medicine at home. 2: Keep in mind that medicine cannot be recycled. Dispose of your medicine by bringing it back to the pharmacy. And finally, 3: Unused medicine is a safety risk. Do not stockpile the medicine. Return unused medicine to the pharmacy for safe disposal.
Bizarre Science: Cyber Skin- Touching the future Max Todd
Senior Science Writer
How do you touch? It’s pretty likely that right now you’re either touching the In-Print edition of Concrete or scrolling on a keypad or phone screen. Now think about what that means you’re actually doing. If you’re holding the paper, how hard are you holding it, how are you distributing that pressure, how are you sliding the pages? Normally, you wouldn’t think of these things at all, they would just come, well, naturally. But how is your body doing that?
is able to detect many kinds of forces across its surface that enable it to hold seemingly mundane objects, like a glass of water or an egg, that have been infamously tricky for robot limbs to grasp. It uses weak electric fields to detect objects first at a distance, and then along and into their surface to calculate the right amount of force and apply it where it needs to be. The sensor is made from silicon rubber, soft to the touch, the same material used for life-like prosthetics, from its use for medicine to movie-screens.
And if you can begin to understand how miraculous it is that your body can do it, how enormous is the task of getting a robot to mimic that same response?
The implications of this breakthrough aren’t just massive for tech giants, but for restoring movement and function in patients with lost and damaged limbs, affording them the gift most of us take for granted.
On the 25th of October 2023, scientists at the University of British Columbia and within Honda’s research institute published a paper showing that they can in fact do it. This breakthrough skin-like sensor
The team of engineers developed this technology in collaboration with Honda, a company that has famously been investing in robotics since the 1980’s, and invented the well-known ASIMO robot. Honda
has also conducted research into technology that can assist walking, and created a buzz with their futuristic Honda Avatar Robot.
Despite the revolutionary design, the sensor is remarkably simple to assemble, the team that designed it are hoping it will be adopted by 2 companies that are trying to simulate life-like robotics, and assist hazardous and monotonous tasks that require human dexterity. However, the technology still has its limitations. Human skin remains on top with over a hundred times
“...breakthrough skin-like sensor is able to detect many kinds of forces... ” more sensory points on the tip of your finger than the device, allowing us to undertake even more tactile
tasks like lighting a match or sewing.
Furthermore, the technology can be supplemented with sensors that detect heat and damage, senses that are seemingly obvious to a human being. Earlier this year, a team at Stanford University revealed a ‘self-healing electronic skin’ that could synthetically realign itself when damaged, however, it lacked the functionality and ease of assembly of this new technology from UBC and Honda. There remains a gap to bridge these two sensors and apply it to real-life examples. However, the pattern is obvious. Technology, though still far off, is accelerating towards mimicking human capabilities. Then, how far away is it from exceeding those capabilities when combined with machine learning? When dealing with as powerful a sense as touch, a feeling central to what many integrate with the human condition, will this technology redefine what it really means to be a human in a robot’s world?
Photo: WikiCommons