Do patients care about the environment when choosing medicine? Do patients care about the environment when choosing medicine?

In this study, we examined to what extent such information influences the choice of medication and whether people support policies to reduce pharmaceutical pollution. The study surveyed over 1500 Swedish adults and asked them to choose between different fictitious medicines with different environmental impacts and different therapeutic effects. There were three medicines to choose from: one with high efficacy but significant environmental impact, another with lower efficacy and lower environmental impact, and one with the lowest efficacy and the lowest environmental impact. Medication choices were made for three different diseases: the common cold, rheumatoid arthritis, and stroke. Interestingly, the most environmentally friendly and least effective medicines were preferred by a majority of participants for the common cold scenario, but this dropped to only a third for rheumatoid arthritis and only a fourth for stroke. The results also showed that support for policies to reduce pharmaceutical pollution was consistently high among the participants. The most supported policy was to put eco-labels on over-the-counter medicines, followed by making environmentally harmful medicines more expensive and having rules for doctors to prescribe more environmentally friendly medicines. Taken together, Swedens consider environmental impacts when choosing medicine, but this consideration seems to be limited to minor ailments. The study also shows that people in Sweden support policies to reduce medicine pollution.