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BANG FOR THE BITE
This is a no-brainer, 5-apple tip, since drop-spots aren't hard to find and none of us wants to worry about drugs in our drinking water.
COCKTAIL FACT
The antidepressant drug clomipramine has been known to cause users to experience orgasms while yawning.
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home › tip library › Drug Disposal
What drug habit do we all need to break?
The Bite
The habit of chucking unused medication. When we flush meds down drains or send them to landfills, they make their way into rivers and even drinking water. Proper disposal is just what the doctor ordered.The Benefits
- Healthier aquatic life. More than 80% of rivers recently sampled tested positive for meds like antibiotics, birth control hormones, and antidepressants.
- Safer drinking water. Trace amounts of pharmaceuticals end up in our H2O because most treatment plants aren't designed to filter them out.
- Helping people who can't afford meds. Many states have programs that'll take your drugs and redistribute them.
Personally Speaking
We take in unused meds to our local pharmacies whenever we have to pick up a prescription (sadly, it doesn't mean we get a discount).Wanna Try?
- The Starfish Project - takes donations of certain meds by mail and distributes them to people in Africa.
- Earth911 - enter your zip to find nearby drop sites for unused pills.
- Drug Repository Programs - check with your local Department of Health or Board of Pharmacy.
- Pharmacies - many pharmacies, such as Rite Aid, have safe drug disposal programs; check with yours.
Jun 15,2007
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All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.
The Stuff that Floats Up During a Round of Writer’s Block
A true and accurate re-telling. IM handles changed to protect the innocent (ish)...
[13:29] hstephenson: what the eff do I write about flushing mdes?
[13:29] hstephenson: meds?
[13:29] hstephenson: good lord
[13:29] jmorgan: ahhaha
[13:30] hstephenson: um, flushing meds is bad. don't do it. the end. by heather.
[13:31] jmorgan: I've seen birth control in a river before
[13:31] jmorgan: the NuvaRings
[13:31] jmorgan: ICK
[13:31] jmorgan: mighta been flushed...
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] jmorgan: no joke!
Now, if that isn't just vomit-worthy for a Friday, I don't know what is.
-Heather... off to feel very grateful that I only have a bottle of Advil and like 45 essential oils in my med cabinet...
[13:29] hstephenson: what the eff do I write about flushing mdes?
[13:29] hstephenson: meds?
[13:29] hstephenson: good lord
[13:29] jmorgan: ahhaha
[13:30] hstephenson: um, flushing meds is bad. don't do it. the end. by heather.
[13:31] jmorgan: I've seen birth control in a river before
[13:31] jmorgan: the NuvaRings
[13:31] jmorgan: ICK
[13:31] jmorgan: mighta been flushed...
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] hstephenson: ew
[13:34] jmorgan: no joke!
Now, if that isn't just vomit-worthy for a Friday, I don't know what is.
-Heather... off to feel very grateful that I only have a bottle of Advil and like 45 essential oils in my med cabinet...
Biter Comments...
*disclaimer: i do not work for a pharmaceutical manufacturer nor am i a doctor; i am an armchair biologist* also, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the tips you put out there.
that said, today's tip on drug recycling was very alarming to me.
people who take medications only until they feel better, rather than until the medication is gone, are potentially causing a very different problem for the earth.
antibiotics work by killing bacteria. (i'll skip the lecture on people taking antibiotics for viral infections, which is a total waste of medication and money). if you do an incomplete job of killing the bacteria (which happens most typically by taking a too-short course of medication), you leave behind the strongest bugs, since the weakest ones are the first to die. as the bugs start to die, you start to feel better.
the problem is, the strongest bugs are still around, and if you stop your medication, they are less likely to die. added bonus: bacteria (and viruses) are extremely adaptive organisms; this is their true key to survival. when you introduce a medication designed to kill them, and then stop before they die, the remaining bugs may mutate and or generate mutated children--the mutation being resistance to the antibiotic you were just using to try to off them.
clearly, this doesn't happen to everyone all the time, because then it would be a given that people would finish their meds because otherwise they'd feel awful all over again.
but when it does happen, this is how we get scary things like multiple-drug-resistant varieties of strep and TB. there are several strains of both of these right now that basically cannot be cured. infections from these bugs are everywhere by the way, including our nation's hospitals. for some of these bugs, we've regressed to the days before we had antibiotics, and people are again dying from simple, previously-treatable infections.
please, please PLEASE finish your entire course of medication, it was prescribed for a reason.
the only way i can see this tip being helpful in the larger picture is in the truly unfortunate situation that someone died and had leftover meds.
as for the nasty nuvaring floating in the water (ick!), you can't recycle those anyway so that problem isn't truly addressed by this tip.
a helpful book on this and other bugs is called "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett.
I agree. This is a great tip - important, practical, and something that's easy to change once you're aware of. I am adding this to my site's news section (with credit and links back to Ideal Bite, of course) to help spread the word, but the web page for the tip doesn't seem to be working. It doesn't come up in the tip archive, and when I found the link in the blog, it pulled up an appropriate URL but a blank page. So...maybe the problem will fix itself soon, but I wanted to let you guys know in case it is a website glitch. Thanks again!
http://www.changedesign.net
I would check with your pharmacist first as they used to just flush them down the toilet as well !!
i agree...as one "arm chair biologist" to another!
we're essentially just making the germs mad, while equipping them with the resistance to kick our collective ass!
here's a great recycling effort:
http://www.teleosis.org/gpp-pollution.php
Great tip. Our hazardous waste collections will take unwanted or expired medications. These include expired aspirin, Tylenol etc. as well as expired prescription meds, which could be left over from an injury & you did not need to use them all. You do not need to be dead to have leftover meds! Our Indiana waste collections will take: batteries,oils, cleaners,pesticides,solvents,mercury, poisons, aerosols & used CFL light bulbs(mercury). All for free! It's a good thing(Thanks Martha!)
Sadly, when I called my local pharmacy (one in a large grocery chain) to ask about disposing of my expired prescription, I was told to simply "flush them". "Really?!?" was my shocked response. I have since found another pharmacy that does take them and disposes of them safely. Like Kristin above said, definitely ask your pharmacist how they dispose of them after you leave.
The standard to dispose of meds is to "flush". I agree that this is a bad idea--there are several studies that prove it with deformed aquatic life, etc. However, returning it to a pharmacy or to be used overseas is reaching. These meds could be out of date or tampered with as far as the receiver is concerned. I certainly do not want to pay full price for something that was a "return"!
What about expiration dates on meds? I always thought it was a marketing ploy to get you to buy more often. I don't always use every bit of Dayquil before I feel better, but then next year when I go to grab it I check out the expiration date and it's expired. Does anyone know anything solid about expiration dates on meds? Preferably, someone not working in pharmaceutical sales...
I don't have anything to do with drug companies. I had heard that meds are less effective after the expiration date.I would try otc drugs for a headache or cold to test it out. I would not use prescription meds that are expired. I would dispose of them responsibily as I said in an earlier post(see June 15th above). I took in stuff on June 23rd to a collection near my house that included an expired pres. med that I no longer needed. I kept it in the original bottle but blacked out my info. Hope this helps
I have been receiving tips for about a week, and I find them to be soft on suggestions for actual things people can do to affect environmental issues. Today for example the tip to go to a NAtional Park barely touches on the fact that a drive saves a lot of CO2 compared to a flight. Sure, most of reading this already know that, but then, why bother? I think the tips need factual information, i.e. a 500 mi. car trip releases this many popunds of CO2 into the air, a flight of equal distance releases this many pounds, anually one family could save this much CO2. These tips should be written to convince people who don't already believe that they can make a difference!
PHOTO ALBUMS
Posted by: Melisa | June 15, 2007 at 07:23 AM