We look forward into the year ahead with a sense of growing excitement as the ETERNAL project’s collaborative research and case study strands gather pace. With several parts of the project’s work programme starting to deliver early results and work progressing strongly across the board, we are looking forward to sharing some of the early highlights and our latest thinking at two notable gatherings of industrialists and researchers from the pharmaceutical and specialty chemicals sectors respectively in the first half of 2024.

A key aspect of evaluating the environmental impact and sustainability of pharmaceuticals is assessing the risk that they may pose to ecosystems. A new public report from the ETERNAL project provides an overview of the current EMA regulation covering the environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals, followed by a comparison against the new proposed Regulation and Directive published earlier in 2023. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for integrating the latest scientific knowledge into pharmaceutical risk assessment to help fill gaps in the current and proposed legislation.