Dealing with leftover medication

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Take care with how you dispose of your unwanted drugs
Have you cleared out your medicine cabinet recently? Doctors at Harvard Medical School have some advice on how to dispose of old or unwanted medicines. For it is not enough to just flush them away or dispose of them in the trash.

Researchers have already found traces of many prescription drugs in the water supply. And children or animals may end up handling drugs put into waste. Medicines cannot be recycled in the same way as other materials, but there are new drug disposal progams you might want to be aware of. For example, in some places drugs can be disposed of with hazardous waste. Or your phamacist may be able to take back medicines. There are also schemes to give medication to the needy - but obviously this must be done under medical supervision.

If you do end up disposing of medicines with your trash, at least keep the label on (but scratch off your name for privacy) and render the drugs unusable by adding water to pills, flour to liquids. Then conceal the containers by putting them into a bag or tub before throwing them out.

Source
Harvard Heart Letter January 2006