The Environmental footprint of morphine: a life cycle assessment from opium poppy farming to the packaged drug

Grants

Funding Acknowledgements

Financial support for this study was provided by Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) grant 2014.14 and additional support for YO's CHE4164 Integrated Industrial Project scholarship was provided by GSK Australia. A priori confidentiality agreements were signed between all authors and GSK, mandating that no precise details of any particular physical or chemical processes would be divulged in the public domain, and that GSK could not delay/prevent any manuscript submission beyond a reasonable timeframe. A similar informal agreement was also reached with Baxter, Australia, that would allow manuscript submission in a timely manner by the non-industry aligned authors. On 1 September 2015, GSK sold its opiate facilities in Australia to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries. Prior to this sale, GSK ceased production of morphine sulfate, but continues to manufacture less-refined technical morphine (95% pure by dry weight). We have kept the use of the term 'GSK' in this manuscript as they were the company involved in the study.