Pharmaceutical expiry dates
Discussion
Do any of you ever check the expiry dates of pharmaceutical products in your medicine cupboard?
I got a bad cold last week with a rather nasty cough so I grabbed whatever I could find rather than go out and buy anything and pretty much devoured an entire bottle of Benylin.
It was only after I had used most of the bottle that I spotted the expiry date was over 15 years ago! When this cough mixture theoretically expired most of my grown-up kids were still at Junior School!
I got a bad cold last week with a rather nasty cough so I grabbed whatever I could find rather than go out and buy anything and pretty much devoured an entire bottle of Benylin.
It was only after I had used most of the bottle that I spotted the expiry date was over 15 years ago! When this cough mixture theoretically expired most of my grown-up kids were still at Junior School!
Be very careful with certain creams etc… and use by dates.
15 years ago, an ex-boss of mine came to work on a Tuesday after taking the Monday off. His left cheek looked as if it had been on fire. Massive blood red rash.
He’d had a graze on his cheek on Sunday, put some cream on - sorted. Woke up on Monday morning with his cheek about 3 inches further out than normal, feeling as if it was on fire, all purple and red, looked in the mirror and realised something was seriously up, his wife freaked out. Off to A&E.
The skin consultant turned up, gave him some antibiotics, and asked him to check the use-by date on the cream. It was 5 years out of date. The perseverative degrades, turns into something else, and aggravates the skin a treat. He bought the photo of the sore cheek into work, and I think everyone went home and chucked out half the stuff in their own medicine cabinets.
15 years ago, an ex-boss of mine came to work on a Tuesday after taking the Monday off. His left cheek looked as if it had been on fire. Massive blood red rash.
He’d had a graze on his cheek on Sunday, put some cream on - sorted. Woke up on Monday morning with his cheek about 3 inches further out than normal, feeling as if it was on fire, all purple and red, looked in the mirror and realised something was seriously up, his wife freaked out. Off to A&E.
The skin consultant turned up, gave him some antibiotics, and asked him to check the use-by date on the cream. It was 5 years out of date. The perseverative degrades, turns into something else, and aggravates the skin a treat. He bought the photo of the sore cheek into work, and I think everyone went home and chucked out half the stuff in their own medicine cabinets.
The expiry date is set by completing extensive stability testing over time. It's part of the licence the manufacturer gets for the product. Over time, the product will degrade until it becomes out of specification. This can be as simple as the active ingredient degrades into something harmless and it becomes less effective, maybe the preservatives degrade so it's no longer protected, or to the more extreme as per the example above where something is degrading into something else that is a poison or something that's not good for you.
If you have any old aspirin, take it out and have a sniff.....smells like vinegar....that's because aspirin degrades (with water) into acetic acid (amongst other things) which IS vinegar :-). The aspirin effectively degrades over time with the moisture in the air.
I work in the Pharmaceutical industry and always check the expiry date before use and chuck it out if it's old.
If you have any old aspirin, take it out and have a sniff.....smells like vinegar....that's because aspirin degrades (with water) into acetic acid (amongst other things) which IS vinegar :-). The aspirin effectively degrades over time with the moisture in the air.
I work in the Pharmaceutical industry and always check the expiry date before use and chuck it out if it's old.
Steve Campbell said:
I work in the Pharmaceutical industry and always check the expiry date before use and chuck it out if it's old.
My girlfriend is a pharmacy technician and checks the date as well. She hated that I would just take two of whatever without looking at the date. She also reads that annoying leaflet that gets in the way every time!Gassing Station | Health Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff