Environmental Classification of Drugs: Gisela Holm speaks at CleanMed Europe Come and see how a voluntary system for assessing the environmental performance of pharmaceuticals can work! Ecotoxicologist Gisela Holm from the Swedish pharmaceutical industry will give a speech on May 31 at CleanMed Europe. As pharmaceutical substances are often persistent and may be harmful to the environment, the task of achieving a non-toxic environment needs to take drugs into account. This works needs not only academic research, but also concrete work from the parties in the healthcare sector, especially the pharmaceutical industry. The Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry, LIF, has in consensus with other stakeholders developed a classification system for the environmental impact of pharmaceutical substances. The model aims at presenting environmental information about pharmaceutical products so that it is easily accessible to the general public as well as to professionals in the health care system. To date, environmental information about PPIs, SSRIs, anti-infectives and sex hormones has been published on the Swedish medical products list (www.fass.se), and more product groups are on the way. The information is presented on three levels of difficulty: for patients and the general public, for professional use, and for specialists (e.g. ecotoxicologists). Dr. Gisela Holm has been working with this classification system since the initiative started. An aquatic ecotoxicology expert with a doctorate from the Stockholm University, she works for AstraZeneca and has compiled several environmental risk assessments of active pharmaceutical ingredients. Dr. Holm is a member of the LIF Environmental Committee, which works with environmental aspects of pharmaceuticals common to the whole industry. Dr. Holm has a long record of working with environmental issues. For nine years, she worked as research and project leader within the field of ecotoxicology at the environmental research institute IVL. Since she started at AstraZeneca, her main research interest is to improve the understanding of pharmaceuticals in the environment. She is also a frequently engaged speaker in this area. At CleanMed Europe, Gisela Holm will account for the Swedish system for environmental classification of pharmaceuticals: the initiative, the proceedings so far and the future plans for the system. Come and see how a voluntary system for assessing (and thus making it possible to improve) the environmental performance of pharmaceuticals can work.