Emissions and environmental levels of pharmaceuticals – Upscaling to the Baltic Sea Region

The report describes the Baltic Pharma Load model (BPL) and the estimated environmental loads and concentrations of selected active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The BPL model was developed as a part of the project Clear Waters from Pharmaceuticals (CWPharma) funded by the EU’s Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme. The calculation model uses national sales statistics as the driving parameter and takes into account selected differences in country-specific practices in e.g. waste management and sewer network coverage. The GIS-based model was compiled as a series of command scripts using the computing language and environment R (R Core Team 2020) and a calculation grid covering the entire Baltic Sea drainage basin. The calculation grid divides the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) into one square kilometer grid cells, with each grid cell containing the background information required for the calculations. The BPL model and the calculation grid are available in the .zip-file as a series of R scripts and .rds-files.