5 things you should know about the medicine in your home
Over-the-counter or prescription? Most of us have one or more medicinal products lying around at home. Here is a guide to handling your home pharmacy responsibly, created in collaboration with professor in pharmacy, René Holm.
1: Never in the bathroom
You should not store medicine in the bathroom, as it is warm and humid — conditions that are rarely ideal for medication. Most medicines—e.g. the painkillers paracetamol and ibuprofen, as well as most antibiotics—may be stored at room temperature, meaning below 25°C. If no storage instructions are listed in the package leaflet, you can assume the medicine tolerates up to 30°C.
2: Lotions and shampoos may also be considered as medicin
Medicines are developed to prevent, diagnose, relieve or treat diseases and symptoms in humans and animals—usually something your doctor has prescribed or you have purchas ed over the counter. But when talking about the home pharmacy, it’s important to note that products such as anti-dandruff shampoo, sunscreen, acne cream and facial creams with UV filters may also contain active ingredients that should be considered medicinal, because they have documented effects on the skin. Facial creams can contain active substances such as retinol, vitamin C, vitamin B3, various AHA/BHA acids, ceramides and peptides. Anti-dandruff shampoos may contain ketoconazole, and sunscreens may contain avobenzone or oxybenzone. Such products should be disposed of as medicine, not as regular waste.
Meet the researcher
René Holm is a doctor and professor of pharmacy at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy. He is dedicated to developing medicines that cause fewer side effects for the people who take them. Link to research profile.
Danes and medicine
- More than four million Danes redeem at least one prescription each year.
- Approx. 1.1 million Danes take five or more types of medicine at the same time; around 65% of them are 80 years or older.
- The most commonly used types of medicine are cholesterol‑lowering drugs, painkillers and antidepressants.
- (Sources: Danish Health Data Authority, Statistics Denmark and Danish Association of Pharmacists)
3: Pet medicine is also medicine
Flea treatments, deworming products and other medicines for animals must be stored and disposed of in the same way as medicine for humans.
4: Never in the trash
Unused medicine should never be flushed down the drain or thrown out with household waste, because the active substances can find their way into nature—especially the aquatic environment. Today, it is common to detect residues of e.g. hormones, painkillers and antidepressants in Danish streams, and these substances can be measured in the fish living there. For example, researchers have found residues of the sedative oxazepam in Danish waterways. In an experiment designed to investigate how oxazepam residues affect fish, Swedish researchers let one group of roach swim in water with environmentally realistic concentrations of oxazepam, while another group swam in oxazepam-free water. The oxazepam‑exposed fish changed their behaviour by showing less fear of pike (a predatory fish in their habitat) compared to fish that had not been exposed. You can read more about the study here.
To keep nature free from pharmaceutical residues, you should hand in unused medicine at the pharmacy or dispose of it as hazardous waste at the recycling station.
5: Expired medicine is not dangerous
An expired date does not mean the medicine becomes dangerous—it simply becomes gradually less effective. Liquid medicine often has a shorter shelf life than tablets, and the shelf life becomes even shorter for medicines used on sensitive areas such as eyes and mucous membranes.
For example, eye drops or creams for infections can typically only be used for a few weeks after opening, because there is a risk of bacterial contamination. You can only be certain that a medicine is 100% effective if used before its expiry date.