EPA Bans CFC-Based Asthma Inhalers

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EPA Bans CFC-Based Asthma Inhalers

Posted by timothy on Friday September 23, 2011 @10:50AM from the next-they-come-for-the-glasses-tape dept.

bonch writes "The EPA has banned over-the-counter asthma inhalers as part of an agreement with other nations to avoid using chlorofluorocarbons, a substance once used in aerosol sprays. Alternative albuterol inhalers cost almost three times as much as the $20 epinephrine inhalers sold by online retailers."

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government idiots by p51d007 · 2011-09-23 10:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Government, EPA...what a bunch of idiots. Here we have an inexpensive asthma product, that helps MILLIONS of people each day, and now thanks to the government, it will costs those people MORE for a different product. One of the scariest things ever said was... "I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to HELP you".
1. Re:government idiots by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 10:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Corporations, what a bunch of idiots. Here we have an ozone depleting product, that will affect BILLIONS of people each day, and now thanks to the government, it will save those people MORE by keeping intact the ozone layer. Once of the scariest things ever said was... "I'm from the corporation, and I'm here to SAVE the planet".
2. Re:government idiots by Cyberax · 2011-09-23 11:28 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Not really. Right now inhalers are among the most significant remaining sources of CFCs.
  The other remaining source is Halon fire suppression systems. Halon is no longer produced, but remaining stocks are still in use.
3. Re:government idiots by ravenshrike · 2011-09-23 11:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The amount of CFCs pumped into the atmosphere by asthma inhalers is negligible at best. Even if every person on the planet used one, which they don't.
4. Re:government idiots by Miamicanes · 2011-09-23 12:16 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  HFA is a weaker propellant, and has a pretty nasty taste & odor to boot.
  Primatene's problem is complicated, because the ban isn't entirely motivated by love for Mother Earth(tm). The DEA wants Primatene off the market, because it's basically aerosolized ephedrine ready for meth production.
  * If Primatene is reformulated with HFA, it has to be re-approved by the FDA
  * Re-approval would be expensive, and the resulting drug would have only limited patent protection due to massive amounts of prior art.
  * The DEA wants reformulated Primatene to include additional ingredients that (supposedly) won't affect asthmatic users, but will taint the ephedrine so it can't be used for meth production.
  * A new version reformulated to DEA standards WOULD be profitably patentable, but the FDA isn't thrilled about adding chemicals of no benefit to users to a product used by extremely vulnerable people whose breathing is pretty fragile to begin with. They know that somewhere out there are at least a few dozen people likely to die if they use the new formula, and have made it clear that they're going to hold approval of the new version to the highest possible standards and nix it at the *slightest* hint of trouble.
  * Primatene's maker is happy about patentability, but worried about lawsuits. Catch-22.
  It's more complicated than what I wrote above, but that pretty much sums it up. It's the perfect storm of stupid symbolic environmentalism, corporate greed, and the war on drugs. Made worse by the fact that the majority of longterm Primatene users are poor and lack proper health care (people with health insurance use albuterol, unless they have very mild asthma and accidentally go somewhere without their inhaler, at which point they run to Walgreen's and buy Primatene to keep around "just in case"). That's also the main theory of why Advair (combination of a steroid and long-but-slow-acting alpha agonist) has a signficantly higher death rate among poor and minority users with seemingly moderate & controlled asthma -- they get prescriptions for Advair and albuterol, buy the Advair, but skip the albuterol because the new formulation is expensive & they don't need it very often. The problem is, when they DO have an acute attack, all they have on hand is Advair, which isn't suitable as a rescue inhaler, and a small percentage of them end up dying under circumstances where albuterol would have saved them. It's a hard theory to ethically test, but one that explains a bothersome side effect (death) of Advair whose victims are overwhelmingly poor Americans.
Very Old News by nbetcher · 2011-09-23 11:07 · Score: 4, Informative

This is actually extremely old news. A treaty was signed over a decade ago to ban various uses of CFCs in phases. The OTC epinephrine inhalers were pulled off of the market by the manufacturer some time ago due to a different reason (which I forget), then they decided to not restart production on it because CFC inhalers would be banned as of 1/1/2010.
Anyone that has asthma will tell you that things dramatically changed for them in 2010 when their old albuterol (fast-acting, for emergencies) inhalers were reformulated to not include CFCs (dubbed HFA, aka Hydrofluoroalkane) . Most HFA-using patients state that they cannot "feel" the aerosol or that it doesn't work nearly as well as the CFC-based ones.*
Point being, CFC inhalers haven't been around for a couple of years and we knew they were going away over a decade ago!
(*From my professional experience.)
My costs went up substantially, and less effective by assemblerex · 2011-09-23 11:27 · Score: 5, Informative

The new inhaler with no insurance? $60. Before? $30
Less pressure, not as effective in getting the meds to my lungs.
I now order them from mexico, same old good stuff that works.
OK that article is a canned article by geekoid · 2011-09-23 11:31 · Score: 4, Informative

being propagated through the media. Probably written by some anti regulation type; or it's plain shoddy 'reporting'.
a) There is a non- CFC primatine mist coming out.
http://www.empr.com/update-on-primatene-mist-discontinuation/article/208381/
b) this has been a phased roll out since 2008
c) albuterol was the first to be regulated to be CFC free.
d) The corporation the make CFC products stalled in making a replacement in order to maximize there profits, and probably to make regulation seem bad.
e) the only impact CFC inhalers, not over the cuonter inhalers. So you will see OTC inhalers, probably soon.
Whoever wrote that article should be slapped up side the head for sowing discontent in the populace with factual lies.

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Quantitative? I'll take a shot at it. by Guppy · 2011-09-23 13:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Quantitative proof or GTFO.
Well, I'll take a shot at it. Please excuse me if I miss a decimal point somewhere, corrections are welcome.
About 14g of material in a Primatene Mist Inhaler. Non-propellant mass is ascorbic acid, dehydrated alcohol (34%), hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, purified water (actual mass of drug is negligible). Don't know the breakdown, but guesstimating about 4g of CFC-12 and CFC-114 propellant per inhaler, since alcohol is ~1/3 mass, and ascorbic acid is listed before the alcohol (ingredients should be listed in order of descending weight, so at least 1/3 ascorbic acid).
In one of the recent news interviews about this, FDA spokesman estimated 1-2 million Primatene Mist users out there. Let's say 12 vials per year * 2mil users (I don't really know how many vials an asthmatic goes through), and call it 20 million vials. That would be 24,000kg of CFCs per year, or 24 metric tons.
For reference, reported peak production of CFC-12 was reached in 1988, at 421,002 metric tons (1000kg in a metric ton), and 8,938 metric tons in 2004 (last reported year). So total usage is not tiny, but still a small fraction of the overall CFC usage.
Re:Quantitative? I'll take a shot at it. by Nethemas+the+Great · 2011-09-23 14:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, engineers resolved the notion of the user powered pump quite some time ago. It's really cool, you just squeeze or depress the mechanism and out comes the product. For the lazy though they've come up with the ingenious notion of replacing the aerosol with carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide when used in human consumables. Either way there are alternatives to CFCs and most cost no different or even less than CFC propellant. The problem isn't the propellant it's the drug manufacturers that feel like charging more.

--
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
Re:Quantitative? I'll take a shot at it. by MakinBacon · 2011-09-23 16:52 · Score: 5, Informative

I take it you've never used any of the environmentally friendly inhalers before, because they are fucking terrible. I've been using them for a few years (The EPA went apeshit insane on albuterol a few years ago, and I had no idea that there was an OTC alternative), and they get routinely clogged up by both dust and even dried medicine, and I can ensure you that this was never a problem with the old inhalers. Thankfully, my asthma is really mild and I rarely need these, but if I ever have a real emergency, I'm fucked.