The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has advised GPs to stop prescribing blue inhalers to asthma patients, citing the treatment’s alleged carbon footprint.Doctors should give people who struggle with asthma NHS literature detailing how puffers harm the environment — including a statement claiming a single inhaler has a greater carbon impact than a car driving 120 kms. NHS, citing an “over-reliance on blue inhalers,” estimates they have a 3% impact on the UK’s carbon footprint. Approximately four million Brits have asthma, with about 17 million inhalers prescribed in the UK in 2023. The federal health service has instructed GPs to inform patients the inhalers are bad for the environment due to the “greenhouse gas effect” from the device’s “hydrofluorocarbon propellant,” which carries the medicine to the lungs, reported the Telegraph. Asthma patients 12 years and older should instead be prescribed a more environmentally friendly, gasless, dry powder “combination inhaler,” containing steroids. Cath Cooksey, pharmacist at Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board, argues the blue inhalers don’t help asthma anyway, they merely provide relief. “Asthma is primarily an inflammatory airway disease and although these blue inhalers might give the feeling of relief, they do not treat the underlying cause,” she told The Times. “Overuse of blue inhalers can indicate a deterioration of asthma and even using three or more a year has been linked to a higher risk of attacks.”“The takeaway to colleagues in the NHS and patients is clear – blue inhalers do not treat asthma and can mask more severe disease.”Michael Crooks, a NHS respiratory physician, told the Telegraph asthma is a “condition caused by inflammation,” and therefore should be treated with “steroid-containing inhalers.”
