A Hazardous Drug (HD) is a drug exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics in animals or humans.
- Carcinogenicity
- Teratogenicity or other developmental toxicity
- Reproductive toxicity
- Organ toxicity at low doses
- Genotoxicity
- Structure and toxicity profiles of new drugs that mimic existing drugs determined hazardous by the above criteria. (In general, this means agents which share at least structural similarity (e.g., platinums, taxanes), with or without similar toxicity profiles.)
In addition, if information about these characteristics is not available for a given drug, but the drug is primarily used as an antineoplastic agent, it will be considered a hazardous drug (HD) and added to the BCCA HD List Addendum.
A drug containing a living organism with the potential to cause infections in humans will be considered a hazardous drug with the designation of biohazardous drug, and will be included on the BCCA HD List.
