"Here's an environmental question for you. What is the proper way to dispose of unused medication? I still have a full bottle of pain pills and the suggestions I get are essentially to dump them into the water supply. Umm.... pass. :-( "
My response:
Great question! There is a short answer and a long answer.
Short answer: Remove the prescription info from the bottle, mix the medicine with something icky, conceal it in a bag or other container, then throw it in the trash.
Long answer: There really is no good answer. The FDA website says to find a take back program in your area. Usually this is the police station, but Rite-Aid, Walgreens, and CVS have mail back programs where you buy a pre-paid package to send to company that processes them (more on this later). If there is no take back program near your home, you should dispose of your medicine in the trash. The website also says that some medicines should be flushed down the toilet to avoid having someone accidentally taken them, and that the damage done to the environment is a better choice than accidental ingestion.
To my mind, this is utter bullshit. The FDA website points out that most of the drugs contaminating our groundwater are from elimination. This means that the drugs are not fully used in the body and get passed on through urine and feces, and because water treatment plants are not equipped to remove these contaminants, the drugs go on to our creeks and oceans. Trace levels of many drugs including antiobiotics, hormones, and painkillers have been found in local water supplies. So what better way to continue contaminating our water supply than by putting completely undiluted drugs straight down the drain!
If you dispose of drugs at home, there are some relatively simple precautions you can take to make sure no one accidentally takes them. The best guide I found online was from the South Caroline Department of Health and Environmental Control, and it describes the steps I listed above in the "short answer" section. This seems to me to be a very effective way to eliminate the risk of accidental ingestion while keeping the drugs out of the water system. There is, however, a minor, secondary problem associated with this route.
Will the drugs leach out from the landfill into the groundwater? A USGS website had a pretty good article on this topic. Basically, landfills built prior to 1970 were unlined, meaning contaminants could leach out into underground aquifers. In the 80s legislation was passed to make all new landfills lined, thereby reducing the amount of leaching possible, but even then, the lining will eventually degrade and leaks will happen. Scientists are currently studying natural process which they hope will filter out most of the contaminants (e.g., eaten by microorganisms, filtered through limestone, etc). But yes, it will eventually be a problem we will have to deal with in the future.
What about the take-back programs? So, this is another interesting option. The mail back programs exclude powerful painkillers like vicodin and hydrocodone, so not helpful in this case. But most police station will take drugs, including controlled prescriptions like those painkillers I listed. In either case, they end up in the same place: a designated disposal facility. The big one that the pharmacies use is Sharps Compliance Inc. I've looked everywhere on their website, but for the life of me, I can't find any description of how they destroy the drugs. Honestly, I'm a little bit suspicious, especially after I found out what happens at the local household hazardous waste facility. In either case, I've emailed the Sharps Inc customer service department, so hopefully I will get a good answer and update this post with a better alternative.
Wait, what was that about the household hazardous waste disposal? Haha, oh yes. I recently dropped off some old household cleaners at the Redwood city household hazardous waste facility. When I dropped them off, I asked the guy what would happen to them. He said the good stuff would be given away to the poor and the rest would be incinerated. WTF?!?! I'm not sure which disturbed me more, the bit about poor people or the incineration of toxins. So I did a little more investigation. Household hazardous waste (which includes paint, pesticides, cleaners, fluorescent bulbs, and batteries; but not used medicines or needles) is regulated at the state level. Each state will have different processes, but from what I've read they are all pretty similar. The best description I've found of the various disposal methods was on the Florida website . Yes, the good paint and cleaners are given away to the poor, and some stuff is incinerated, but most of the processes do seem legitimate, and certainly better than the landfill.
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