Flushing outdated drugs can cause health risks

[question everything]

Fixit: Flushing outdated drugs can cause health risks

Q How should I dispose of outdated prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs?

Fixit Karen Youso

A Do not flush them down the toilet or pour them down a sink. Although this method is easy and prevents immediate accidental ingestion, water treatment plants and septic systems are not designed to deal with medication disposal. Eventually the medicine-tainted water makes its way into the environment. There are long-term health risks to consuming even minute quantities of medications in drinking water, and the full extent of environmental damage remains unknown.

With the following precautions, you can throw unwanted medications in the trash.

Keep in the original container. The labels may contain safety information and the caps are typically childproof. Leaving the content information clearly visible, scratch out the patient's name or cover it with permanent marker.

Modify the contents to discourage consumption.
• Solid medications: Add a small amount of water to pills or capsules to at least partially dissolve them.
• Liquid medications: Add enough table salt, flour, charcoal or nontoxic powdered spice, such as turmeric or mustard, to discourage consumption of the contents.
• Blister packs: Wrap packages in multiple layers of opaque tape, such as duct tape.
Tape the medication container shut with packing or duct tape and put it inside an opaque bag or container, such as an empty yogurt or margarine tub, to ensure that the contents cannot be seen.

Discard in your garbage can. Do not place in the recycling bin. Do not conceal medicines in food products, because they could be inadvertently consumed by wildlife scavengers.

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/397/story/216859.html

[katinmn]

1. With 40% of Americans on a prescription drug, our water and soil

is full of the stuff now.

[greiner3]

2. Could I send them to the WH?

Maybe some desperate closet junkie there would take them. Seriously, I take 5 medications daily and I'm due to toss some soon. Thanks for a well thought out post. I'll follow your directions, and save a little downstream woater in the process!

[Jersey Devil]

3. Umm, but then there's gonna be some really spaced out pigeons at the dump

Does any of that matter if it is just going to wind up in the ground water once it is taken to the dump?

[question everything]

5. Can pigeons open child proof containers?

Won't surprise me. I cannot..

[Jersey Devil]

11. Tjhe containers may be child proof, but they are not waterproof

Anything in them would eventually leech into the ground.

[htuttle]

8. Reminds me of an old PSA commercial

It went, "When you throw something away, where IS 'away'?", as it pulled back to show a dump.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. Male fish are getting feminine characterists from female hormones

and probably from some plastics too.

[Straight Shooter]

7. One reason why young girls are entering puberty so early now.

Isn't the number one prescription for women now Premarin? You know it can't be good to have even minute traces of that in the drinking water. Then of course there's taking a hot shower, what a good way to absorb it into your skin.

It reminds me of that song by Melanie, at Woodstock, "We were so close there was no room, we bled inside each other's wounds, we all had caught the same disease ..." Well, now we're all taking each other's medicines. Perverse, isn't it?

There are so few safeguards anymore. I use a water filter, but I don't know how much good it does. :shrug:

[tocqueville]

6. the best way is to take them back to a pharmacy

which can deal with it and send it to safe destruction

that's how several European countries try to solve the problem...

but of course you have to pass a law that makes it mandatory

besides there are plenty (in reality enormous amounts) of medecines that are never used, but can still have a valid expiration date. Those can be collected for example in France through :



secured and sent to people that need them and can't afford them through :

http://www.psfci.org/new/indexuk.htm (Pharmacists without borders)

or a similar NGO

[question everything]

9. True. Pharmaceuticals have to protect their asses so they put

an expiratin date even though there is still enough potency left.

So shipping them to developing countries could really help.

[montana_hazeleyes]

10. Some of these

ways to throw out still seem dangerous to me. I like the poster's response to take them to a pharmacy.

It just seems kids or animals will work their asses off getting into something and quite often succeed.

I know, what we need is for the drug companies to hand out containers made out of that horrid plastic that things like walkmans come in. The ones you go insane trying to open? You cut your fingers, get scissors, work like hell, cut it open, then cut your fingers again on the hard jagged plastic. Nobody can get into those thing easily.

Make 'em resealable and when it's full of old scripts there you go.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. Not flushing drugs can be a health risk...

or lead to extended periods with a lover named Bubba.