What is the best way to dispose of expired perscription medicines?!
Question: I am cleaning out my bathroom closet and found a couple old bottles of pills, including muscle relaxers. I barely took any of the pills and they are almost 2 years expired. I have this gut feeling that just throwing them in the trash isn't the most prudent decision.
Am I just being overly cautious? Is there anything recommended for disposing of meds? Thanks!
Answers: I am cleaning out my bathroom closet and found a couple old bottles of pills, including muscle relaxers. I barely took any of the pills and they are almost 2 years expired. I have this gut feeling that just throwing them in the trash isn't the most prudent decision.
Am I just being overly cautious? Is there anything recommended for disposing of meds? Thanks!
Bring the pills to a toxic waste round up in your area. Put them in a baggie, not the Rx container.
Some places still don't execpt medical waste. So instead of flushing them, just trhow them away. Make the pills uningestible somehow, the weblink suggests using glue, and just toss them, The link also says why not to flush them.
http://www.ecocycle.org/askeco-cycle/200...
I have always flushed them down the toilet because I fear someone may get into them in the trash but recently heard that they can get into the water system this way. It was advised to grind them up and put them in the trash. I still don't find that safe and use the toilet.
I've always dumped them in the garbage disposal with hot water.
Flushing them down the toilet is a good way to do it. I helped clean out my grandparents bathroom and they had a lot of expired meds, my dad said that it was fine to flush them down the toilet, If you really want to feel safe about it, call the poison control center, i'm sure that they can give you a good answer.
Just flush down the toilet and remove label with your name.
If you want to be very cautious, grind or smash the pills and throw in the trash. Don't put them in the water system. Also, remove your name and prescription number from the bottle.
I would suggest taking them to a hazardous waste dump. The problem is that our drinking supplies now contain many drugs that are just thrown down the toilet or put in the trash can that is carried to the land fills where water run off carries them back to our water supplies. As the water gets reprocessed, it ends up back in the drinking water. So not only do we have to have contend with the viagra now being found in the drinking water, but with the toxic garbage the Metropolitan Water Districts are adding like, the chemical most commonly used in public water fluoridation today, hydrofluorosilic acid, and it is not manufactured in a laboratory under strict conditions, as most people, including doctors and dentists, believe. To the contrary, these chemicals come directly from the pollution scrubbers of the phosphate fertilizer manufacturing plants. Hydrofluorosilic acid is a hazardous, toxic waste. It is more toxic than lead. It is a poison - even a teaspoonful will kill you.
good luck