Parent actions around expired and leftover medicine in the home

Implications

This Mott Poll addresses an important parent responsibility: disposing of expired and unused medication. Keeping medicines after they are expired or no longer needed creates an unnecessary health risk for children. Younger children getting into medicine in the home is a major source of unintentional pediatric poisonings. For older children, the issue is diversion of medicines for experimentation or intentional misuse.

Nearly all parents reported having OTC medicine in their home, and it is not uncommon for OTC medicine to reach its expiration date with doses remaining. When the expired medicine is discovered, parents must choose whether to use the medicine past its expiration date or to discard it. Less than half of parents in this Mott Poll agreed that OTC medicines are not as effective when past their expiration date and only one-quarter believe taking expired medicine is unsafe. To some extent, this thinking is in line with the how expiration dates are determined. Based on product testing, expiration dates represent the date at which the manufacturer can still guarantee the medicine’s full effectiveness and safety. Many parents may base their decision on the amount of time past the expiration date.

In many cases, parents do not realize a medicine is expired until they reach for medicine to help their child’s symptoms. And for many parents this may happen at bedtime or early in the morning when it is inconvenient to go out and purchase new medicine. The inconvenience adds another layer to the decision about whether to give their child a dose of expired medicine. Medicines lose their effectiveness over time, so it is reasonable for parents to base their decision on how far past the expiration date. A strategy to avoid this situation is to check expiration dates for their child’s OTC medicines twice a year, particularly before allergy and/or flu season.

Nearly half of parents in this Mott Poll had leftover prescription medicine in their home, including from their child’s prescription. For example, this may occur because parents discontinue giving doses of antibiotics earlier than prescribed, which creates a risk that treatment for an infection will be inadequate. It is important that parents understand and follow directions from their child’s doctor and/or pharmacist regarding prescription medicine. Parents might ask if there is likely to be leftover medicine, so they know what to expect.

Parents should store OTC and prescription medicine in its original packaging, to make sure they have access to dosing and expiration information. Medicine should be stored in a cool, dry place, avoiding humid locations such as a bathroom cabinet, and out of reach of younger children. Parents of older children should lock or at least monitor certain medication that can be misused, including pain medication and sleep medication.

When parents decide to dispose of expired or leftover medicine, the safest choice is to drop off the medicine at a permanent collection site or a periodic take-back event. Parents in this Mott Poll reported using collection sites at their local hospital, pharmacy or doctor’s office; some pharmacies also have mail-back options. In addition, many communities host take-back events once or twice a year in conjunction with the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Take Back Day.

If parents are unable or unwilling to return expired or leftover medicine to a collection site, a secondary option is to dispose of the medicine in the household trash. Experts recommend putting the medicine into a plastic bag, dissolving it with water and adding kitty litter, coffee grounds or other material that will mix with the medicine and make it unappealing for children or pets to eat. Sealing the bag will prevent the medicine from leaking. Generally, parents should avoid flushing expired or unused medicine down the toilet or sink, which may result in medicine getting in the water supply which exposes residents to chemicals in drinking water.