Recycle Drugs, Recycle Medicine – Disposing of Medicine Properly
Posted by Norman Fong
April 27, 2013 10am – 2pm is National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. The DEA is promoting this day for people to turn in your unused or expired medication for safe disposal. They have a local collection site locator on their website. It is important to recycle drugs and recycle medicine properly. Several cities near me are participating with most drop of locations at police stations.
We all have heard of traces of drugs in the water system. It is time to make sure no one contributes to this any more by flushing expired or unused medicine down the drain. Wastewater treatment facilities aren’t designed to remove pharmaceuticals but someday may need to be.
Many local police departments take medicine waste as do many pharmacies.
FDA has some guidelines, some of which seem outdated.
NoDrugsDownTheDrain.org has a locator to help you find places to properly dispose of medicine.
Chemicals from medicines have been even measured in water from sewage treatment plants. Our waste has traces of these chemicals and chemicals from cosmetics wash off from our skin as we shower. This will be hopefully someday addressed.
Expired Drugs
A recent study by UCSF found that 86% of expired drugs that were 28 to 40 years old, were still potent. Aspirin and Amphetamine fellow below te 90% reasonable variation allowed by the FDA.
China Trash Can Chinglish – Lost in translation
Here is an interesting trash can we encountered deep in the heart of China. Glad to see they are pushing recycling. Not sure why they choose Organism for Trash…
Filed under: Easy, Effort, Environment, Green, Health, Home, Water | Tags: flush medicine, Medicine Disposal
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed.
2 Responses to “Recycle Drugs, Recycle Medicine – Disposing of Medicine Properly”
Leave a Reply
Please do not put your URL in the comment text and please use your PERSONAL name or initials and not your business name.
October 5th, 2009 at 12:01 am
[...] Also dispose of medication properly. [...]
December 30th, 2011 at 1:50 am
Expired medicines should be disposed properly for safety. However most people do not follow this practice and just flush it causing damage to water systems. It is good to note that there are agencies that they can contact for the safe disposal of unused or expired medicine so that our water systems can be protected.