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Nearly ½ of parents have leftover prescription medications at home

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Many children live in homes with unused prescription drugs and expired medications, a new national poll suggests.

Nearly half of parents say they have leftover prescription medication at home, according to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at University of Michigan Health.

Four in five parents say they have disposed of over-the-counter medicine past the expiration date.

“We found that it’s common for parents to keep medicines long after they are expired or no longer needed, which creates an unnecessary health risk for children,” said Mott Poll co-director Sarah Clark, M.P.H.

“Younger children getting into medicine in the home is a major source of unintentional poisonings. For older children, access to these medicines brings risk of experimentation, diversion to peers, or other intentional misuse.”

The nationally representative poll was based on 2,023 responses from parents of children 18 and under who were surveyed between August and September 2022.

Less than half of parents believe that over-the-counter medicine is less effective past its expiration date, while one in five parents think it’s unsafe.

“Parents may not realize that medicine is expired until they need it to address their child’s symptoms,” Clark said. “At that point, parents must decide if they will give the expired medicine to their child or go out to purchase new medicine.”

More than a third of parents say it’s never okay to give their child expired medicine. But one in three parents believe it’s okay to do so up to three months past the expiration date, and about the same number say it would be OK past six months or longer.

“The expiration date is the manufacturer’s guarantee that a medication is fully safe and effective; over time, the medicine will lose its effectiveness,” Clark said. “Parents considering whether to give their child medicine long past its expiration date should question how well it will work.”

Proper medication disposal

More than three in five parents say they are more careful about disposing leftover prescription medicine than over the counter medication. Most also believe it’s important to properly dispose of expired or leftover medicine to prevent children from getting into the medicine and to protect the environment.

Still, many parents struggle with knowing how to dispose of it. Nearly three fourths say they do not know which medicines should be mixed in with coffee grounds or kitty litter and one in seven have flushed medicine down the toilet.

The safest choice, Clark said, is to drop off medicine at a permanent collection site at a doctor’s office, pharmacy or hospital, or at a community site in conjunction with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s twice annual national drug take back day.

“Unused and expired medications are a public safety issue and pose health risks to children,” Clark said. “It’s important that parents dispose of them properly when they’re no longer needed to reduce risks of kids getting sick as well as the negative impact on the environment.”

How to properly safeguard kids from unused medication