Not all the medicines manufactured every year are consumed and adversely vast amount of medicines go unused or expired. Unsafe handling and disposal practices of unused and expired medicines results in environmental hazards which is a source of concern. A cross-sectional survey was performed in Delhi-NCR, India among 500 respondents that reflected their awareness, behaviors and disposal practices for unused and expired drugs. Despite the fact that the majority of respondents were optimistic about disposing of unused and expired drugs, nearly more than half of the survey population were unsure of proper disposal procedures. A total of 268 (53.6%) were aware of the problem of medicine waste; about 236 (47.2%) read the directions for disposing of medications, and 121 (24.2%) respondents were aware of drug take back system. The most common practice of disposal of unused and expired medicines among people surveyed were dumping in household garbage. With respect to the level of public awareness regarding the legal disposal management and destruction of the medicine wastes, the results revealed an urgent need of public information creating awareness using ecofriendly methods of disposing unwanted medicines among community.

Bifenthrin, a synthetic pyrethroid, and pyriproxyfen, a plant growth regulator, are used extensively in agriculture for controlling the different insect pests. The present study was undertaken to examine the dissipation behavior of a formulation with a combination of pyriproxyfen and bifenthrin on chili and brinjal under field conditions at four different locations. Dissipation study of combination of pyriproxyfen and bifenthrin revealed swift degradation in both crops with a half-life of 2.5-2.6 and 2.0-2.1 days in brinjal and chili, respectively. Also, a simple method for simultaneous quantification of pyriproxyfen and bifenthrin was developed and validated using modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) technique on liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Recovery of the method was found to be under an acceptable range of 90.0%-93.5% and 88.7%-94.3% in chili and 92.4%-96.6% and 97.4%-100.9% in brinjal for pyriproxyfen and bifenthrin, respectively. At harvest time, the terminal residues of bifenthrin and pyriproxyfen were below the maximum residue limits set by European Union in chili and brinjal, respectively, suggesting that the use of this pesticide formulation is safe and does not impose harmful effects on human health.