Risks of Medicines Used in Companion Animals to Urban Biodiversity

Ecological impacts of companion animal pharmaceuticals have had limited consideration in the approval process despite the toxicity to exposed non-target organisms.

This being due to present assumption that the benefits of the use of these pharmaceuticals override the potential wider ecotoxicological risk.

However, due to evidence of the great number of cats and dogs in the UK (20 M), parasiticides from this source occur at detectable concentrations within the urban environment. This project will combine exposure modelling, TK/TD modelling of pulsed and mixture exposures and food web modelling.

Landscape scale risks of these substances to biodiversity in urban environments will be characterised, with the potential to provide new frameworks for regulatory risk assessment of these detected compounds.