October 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Sep		Nov »
	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Sleep News Blog

Prescription Sleep Medicine

Do You Trash it, Flush it, Or What?

Posted by sleepyguy in Prescription Sleep Medicine on October 08th, 2010

Disposing of medicines is a tricky subject. No one wants to be responsible for making someone else sick, especially a child, but that is the risk of improperly disposing of medications. For the person they are prescribed for, medicines can be life-saving. But oftentimes, people have leftovers they are unsure how to dispose of. Most medicines have disposal instructions on the label, but if yours doesn’t, here is the proper disposal procedure for most medications.

Many medicines can be thrown away in your regular household trash if you mix them with something unpalatable, such as coffee grounds and sealing them in a bag or plastic container. Some localities have “drug take-back programs” which accept and safely dispose of your unused or expired medications. Your local government’s trash and recycling service is a good place to start to find out if there is a program offered in your area. Your pharmacist is another authority that might know of these types of programs. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration advises that “up to 80% of drug users take medications belonging to friends or relatives” so by utilizing a drug take back program you are doing far more than simply disposing of unwanted drugs.

Certain medications can be fatal for children in a single dose and these are usually the ones with special disposal instructions. Usually, these medicines can be flushed down the toilet so “they cannot be accidentally used by children, pets, or anybody else.” If your medication does not have disposal recommendations on the label, you can call the pharmacy where you purchased it or check the US Food and Drug Administration ’s website for their advice. Some environmentalists are concerned that flushing medications down a drain can result in those medications being found later in our water system, but the truth is that “the majority of medicines found in the water system are a result of the body’s natural routes of drug elimination (in urine or feces.” Some of the medicines that should be disposed of by flushing include Demerol, Morphine Sulfate, Oxycontin, and Percocet.