Three weeks and counting.
That is the amount of selling time left for inhalers that use chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) propellants. Only two products remain on the market -- Combivent Inhalation Aerosol and Maxair Autohaler -- and neither will be sold after Dec. 31 as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completes its CFC-inhaler phaseout program.
Most inhalers now use either hydrofluoroalkane propellants, which are not as harmful to the Earth's ozone layer as CFCs, or no propellants at all.
Switching patients over to the propellant-free Combivent inhaler (Respimat) will require a new prescription and a different dosing schedule for patients, noted a release from drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim.
The Maxair Autohaler will be discontinued entirely, according to a spokesperson for Valeant Pharmaceuticals, which now owns drugmaker Medicis Pharmaceuticals.
This final stage of the CFC-inhaler phaseout is the culmination of a decades-long effort, Badrul Chowdhury, M.D., director of pulmonary, allergy, and rheumatology products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told MedPage Today.
"For more than 2 decades, the FDA and EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] have collaborated to phase out CFCs in inhalers -- a process that included input from the public, advisory committees, manufacturers, and stakeholders," he said in a statement.
The elimination of CFCs from inhalers, hairsprays, deodorants, and air conditioning systems was part of an international agreement signed in 1987, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
The FDA has posted a list of CFC-free asthma and COPD drug inhalers on its website.