There are numerous adverse effects of occupational exposures to hazardous drugs. These effects are both short-term as well as long-term. The hazardous drugs cause carcinogenic, genotoxic, organ toxicity and teratogenic disorders that are highly lethal. These occupational exposures to hazardous drugs can take place during all the drug related activities that include drug manufacture, administration, handling, monitoring, transport, distribution, storage and waste treatment.

The short term effects caused due to occupational exposures to hazardous drugs include skin and eye irritation, dizziness, cough, allergic reactions, headache, nausea and vomiting. The long term effects of these perilous drugs include respiratory and reproductive disorders, congenital malformations, and chromosomal aberrations, loss of eyesight, sterility, leukemia and even cancer. Antineoplastic and cytotoxic agents used in chemotherapy causes adverse affects on the workers handling them. To combat all these situations, strict adherence to safety guidelines and measures is highly mandatory.

The designing of safety guidelines for safe handling of hazardous drugs requires active participation of multidisciplinary groups along with the mutual aid of units like medicine, nursing, administration, risk management, pharmacy safety and environmental services. The safety guidelines must be frequently reviewed and modified by all these units to assure the complete safety of all the workers engaged in the drug handling activities. Lack of some resources in the healthcare settings can affect the scope of these safety programs.

The major area of concern for all the pharmaceutical engineers is the prevention of workers from perilous affects of cytotoxic and antineoplastic drugs. The safety guidelines stress on the use of biological safety cabinets, personal protective equipments, closed system drug transfer devices and other safety equipments to minimize the affects of harmful exposures.