Leftover medications can easily get into the wrong hands. Here’s when and how to dispose of old medication.
For those doing spring cleaning, health care professionals at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt want to add an area to the clean-up list: medicine cabinets.
Cleaning out your cabinets tidies your living space, and it’s also an important way to help decrease medication accidents.
By safely removing any unneeded or expired over-the-counter and prescription medications from our houses, we help keep our families safe from accidental exposure or ingestion. Taking inappropriate medicines can lead to health scares, emergency department visits, hospital admissions or worse.
Each year, about 60,000 to 70,000 emergency department visits and over 450,000 calls to poison control centers are made in the United States regarding children under 6 years old who ingest medication without adult supervision.
Often these toxic accidents are unintentional, and they frequently involve young children, particularly 1- to 2-year-olds who get ahold of prescription or over-the-counter medications that were not stored safely at home.
It is tempting to keep unfinished prescriptions such as antibiotics or pain medications, “just in case.” However, pharmacists remind families that medicines are not one-size-fits-all, and even a small dose of the wrong medication can cause serious harm or death, especially to a child.
Pharmacists calculate doses for children based on the child’s weight, so what works for one could seriously harm another. That leftover pain medication or antibiotic should not linger in your bathroom or kitchen drawer; better to dispose of it safely.
Regularly check all the places you store medication, whether in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom drawer – even a purse – for medications that are no longer needed or ones that have expired. At the very least, do a cabinet clean-out once a year. Every six months would be even better.
What to get rid of
Look for the expiration date on your prescription and over-the-counter pill bottles and packages. Get rid of any medicines that have expired. This includes ointments, supplements and vitamins, not just prescription pills or capsules. Keep in mind that prescriptions usually expire after one year.
Discard any unmarked containers. If an item cannot be identified, get rid of it.
The fewer risky bottles you have in your house, the safer everyone will be.
How to safely dispose of old medications
There are several ways to safely get rid of old medications:
- Take them to an approved drop-off location. According to the FDA, the best way to safely discard most unused or expired medication is at a take-back location. These are usually kiosks or drop-off boxes at pharmacies or medical clinics.
- Mail-back envelopes or packets to help dissolve medications for disposal.
- On National Drug Take Back Day, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration accepts unused prescription medications at in-person drop-off sites.
- Ask your pharmacy for a mail-back envelope for disposing of opioid painkillers.
If you must dispose of medications in your household trash
If none of the drop-off or mail-back options are available, there are ways to safely dispose of most medications at home. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers these instructions:
- Remove the medication from its original container and pour it into a sealable bag. Do not open or crush tablets and capsules.
- Add cat litter, used coffee grounds, dirt or any unappealing mixture to discourage children or animals from ingesting the medicine.
- Seal the bag and place it in your household trash.
- Remove any identifying information, such as the label, from your prescription bottles and place those in your trash.
- Some medications should be flushed down the toilet. Review the FDA Flush List to see which ones should be disposed of this way. Do not flush medication in the toilet before reviewing the FDA’s list. Flushing is only for certain medications that are sought-after for misuse, have abuse potential, or can result in death from one dose.
- Any needles, pen needles, or auto-injectors should be placed in an FDA-cleared sharps container. If you don’t have one, use a heavy-duty plastic household container, such as a laundry detergent bottle. Cap it with its lid, tightly seal with duct-tape and label “DO NOT RECYCLE” before placing in your trash.
Proper disposal of medications
To check for disposal locations in your area, click below.
