Safe Medicine Disposal - Sept 25

[forestmaster]

On September 25, 2010, DEA will coordinate a collaborative effort with state and local law enforcement agencies to remove potentially dangerous controlled substances from our nation’s medicine cabinets. Collection activities will take place from 10:00 a.m. through 2:00 p.m. at sites established throughout the country. The National Take-Back Day

Comments

[rev_mom]

Does that include stool softeners?

[forestmaster]

If you consume and don't fully process a medicine, it'll go where it has to go... but flushing additional pharmaceuticals down the toilet is not proper disposal... and there's some concerns about what even the consumed but not broken down pharmaceuticals are doing when they get to the waterways and compound concentrations over time.

Ideally it'd be nice to live in a world where people needed and otherwise consumed less medications, but in the meantime, there's people studying and measuring what concentrations are showing up in the water and trying to find ways to break it down so we're not getting too many abnormal fish and other aquatic life, let alone what it may eventually do to our drinking water, too...

[rev_mom]

I know...should have seen the gigantic pile of "shells" from Procardia XL and other pharmaceuticals at the wastewater treatment plant in Milwaukee...

It's all pretty much in our drinking water anyway (our major concern here seems to be radium/radon gas), but I worry more about the countries where many of these drugs are manufactured Puerto Rico, India, China, Africa, etc and the pollution there.We're all living on the same planet and it will affect us one way or another.

And then, as you said, the consumed drugs wind up in the waste water too, either unchanged or their metabolites.The package inserts that come with most pharmaceuticals have that info. It's fairly fascinating reading..to me at least.

Most water is very "old", having been through its cycle many many times, but it's something we take for granted until we don't have it anymore. I've been in places where that is true, and it is shocking.