Dangerous Tossed Items

Most American households have a supply of old prescription drugs lying unused.  The symptoms they were used to treat may have long vanished, but the bottles are retained just in case.  Many medicines though have limited life spans.  If they are not used by a certain date, they will not be fully effective.  Simply tossing them into the trash as one would for any item that goes into the garbage is not a responsible method for disposal when the drugs contain dangerous chemicals.  Every year the amount of drugs that fall into this sort of category grows by around 200 million pounds.  It amounts to a considerable hoard.

This growing pile can endanger children and others who may be interested in sampling something out of that bottle of pills they came across.  Simply flushing them down the toilet is not a good option either.  It puts what may be dangerous chemicals into the waste stream where they may end up polluting rivers or coastal waters.  These chemicals can work their way up the food chain becoming more concentrated at every step.  By the time, they reach the sort of fish we eat; the concentration can be high enough to be of concern.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has been conduction nationwide collection since 2010.  Results from the last one recorder were a whopping 500,000 pounds of drugs to discard.

Trash may be the Best Disposal

Despite the success of the DEA’s collection efforts, analysts feel trash disposal by residents the most efficient means of disposal.  The incineration the DEA employs to get rid of its collection is the most thorough method for eliminating dangerous chemicals from the environment, but the high temperatures required make it a big energy consumer.  Energy is also needed to get the person making the disposal to the collection site.

The EPA has issued guidelines for how people should put their unused medicines in the trash.

This is seen as the most realistic method for disposal. Swedenwhich has long had collection programs has determined that over the long haul, they only end up netting around forty per cent of the unused medicines.  They learned that the chances for the drugs making their way into the environment were about the same using the collection methodology as it was for having everyone just throw them away at home.  There was far less energy used in home throw away however.

On the other hand, it has been suggested that many people would never get around to throwing their drugs away were it not for collection programs.  They serve as a prompt for people to clean out their medicine cabinets.

There are trade offs to be considered in either case.  With home disposal though, there is no need to wait for the collection date to come around.  One simply tosses the item the moment it is decided that the time has come to clear out the medicine chest.