If you have asthma, chances are you have a prescription for a fast-acting inhaler or bronchodilator. Your doctor or prescription plan may call this an albuterol metered dose inhaler (MDI). There are changes in the works for these medicines that you should know about. Although the main ingredient in the medicine won’t change, the way your new inhaler works may have slight differences you should know about.
Just like with aerosol spray cans until the 1970s, fast-acting/rescue inhalers use chlorofluorocarbons to make the contents of the canister spray out. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are not good for the environment, and just like with aerosol spray cans, the use of CFCs in asthma inhalers is going to be phased out. CFCs aren’t harmful to people, but they are harmful for the ozone layer, so consumer products have stopped using them. The same is true for your inhaler.
As part of an international environmental treaty, the U.S. and other countries agreed to stop using CFCs. In keeping with its treaty obligations, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled in 2005 that asthma medication manufacturers need to replace the inhalers using CFCs with a different type of inhaler by 2009.
A new way of delivering asthma medications has started replacing CFCs and is called hydrofluoroalkane (HFA). It has been used in inhalers for more than a decade and will continue to replace CFC inhalers as they’re phased out.
Even though companies that make inhalers don’t have to stop use of CFCs until 2009, many are already starting to do so.
The asthma medication in the new inhalers is the same. Only the way the inhaler gets the medicine to your lungs is different.
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