What is the safe and proper way to dispose of medication you no longer are taking?

Answer 1

You may not know whether the medicine you have is with hazardous wastes or not. So the best way to dispose medicines is to take them to a nearby pharmacy or bring them to one of the FREE Safe Medicine Disposal events for proper disposal.

There are health risks associated with medicines thrown in the trash. When you throw them in the trash, children and pets can get into these drugs and once in landfills, the drugs can trickle into groundwater.

Flushing medications down the drain used to be the common solution. However, according to a study conducted four years ago by the United States Geological Survey, 80 percent of 139 streams sampled across 30 states detected very low concentrations of chemicals commonly found in prescription drugs. Flushing drugs can kill helpful bacteria in septic systems and pass largely untouched through sewage treatment plants. Disposing of unwanted medicines down the drain or in toilets can harm aquatic life in the Bay and Pacific Ocean. Eventhough wastewater is treated before it is discharged to the Bay and Pacific Ocean, wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to remove medications.

Answer 2

We used to say you could flush it or put it down the drain, but that was before we found so much medicine in our surface water systems from all the people using common medications.

The latest advice I have seen is to:
1. Ruin the medicine to make it less attractive to anyone who might come across it. Put water into pills or put sawdust or cat litter into liquids.
2. Wrap the medicine in a paper bag or wad of newspaper and put it in the garbage that goes to the landfill.

Sanitary landfills are supposed to have liners, collection pipes, and monitors to watch out for this sort of thing.

Answer 3

we were told that to dispose old medications, put them all together (remove the containers) in one ziploc bag (or heck, any plastic bag) then throw them in your regular trash. be sure to put them somewhere around the middle. by mixing the pills altogether, nobody will know the name of the medication. they dont recommend flushing them in the toilet because it might contaminate our water system.

Answer 4

The safest thing to do is to return them to a pharmacy, they can never fall into the wrong hands then

Answer 5

Take it to the Dr. that prescribed it and get a refund. Take the refund and pay to have it dropped out of the space shuttle that lands on the moon.

Answer 6

just throw it in the garbage!

Answer 7

FLUSH IT DOWN TOILET....

Answer 8

FLUSH IT DOWN THE TOILET! DUH!