• Posted August 21, 2025

Weather Disasters Pose Immediate Threat To U.S. Drug Supply

Climate change-driven weather disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and floods pose an immediate threat to the United States drug supply chain, a new study says.

Nearly two-thirds of all U.S. pharmaceutical production plants are located in a county that has experienced at least one weather disaster declaration during the past six years, researchers reported Aug. 20 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This vulnerability has already caused chaos in America’s health care system, researchers noted.

In both 2017 and 2024, hurricanes that hit in Puerto Rico and North Carolina triggered nationwide shortages of IV fluids, the team said.

“Drug shortages following weather disasters demonstrate how the pharmaceutical supply chain is not yet resilient to climate-related disruptions,” said senior researcher Leticia Nogueira, scientific director of health services research at the American Cancer Society.

“A limited number of facilities may manufacture significant shares of key therapeutics,” Nogueira said in a news release. “This could put many people in need of lifesaving drug treatment at risk of disruptions or delays in care.”

For the study, researchers analyzed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data for nearly 11,000 drug production facilities active between 2019 and 2024.

During those six years, nearly 63% of the facilities were located in a county affected by at least one weather disaster, results show.

On average, about 34% of U.S. drug production plants faced weather disasters each year, researchers noted.

“These disaster events posed risks of disruptions to facilities active in all aspects of the supply chain, from active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacture to packaging, disruptions that could be further magnified by the time needed for FDA reinspection of damaged facilities,” researchers wrote in their paper.

Hurricanes were the most common weather disaster to threaten U.S. drug-making facilities, researchers added.

However, the researchers also found there’s nowhere to hide. Counties without drug production plants had about the same average risk of a weather disaster declaration as those now home to such a plant. Moving plants won’t protect them.

“These findings underscore the importance of recognizing climate-related vulnerabilities and the urgent need for supply chain transparency that allows integration of disaster risk management strategies into strategic resource allocation throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain,” Nogueira said. “Moving forward, threats must be examined and proactively mitigated to prevent critical health care disruptions.”

These weather threats add to the vulnerability of the U.S. drug supply chain, said Mark Fleury, principal for policy development-emerging science at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

“Life-saving cancer drugs, especially older generic sterile injectable drugs, have been in chronic shortages due to a combination of factors, including economic reasons and natural disasters,” he said in a news release.

Beefing up and adding resiliency to U.S. drug production is needed “to ensure patients can access the medications they need without disruptions to their care,” concluded Fleury, who was not involved in the research.

More information

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has more on drug shortages.

SOURCE: American Cancer Society, news release, Aug. 20, 2025