Fate of Improper Drug Disposal and its Impact on Health
Swarnali Das Paul, Sacheen Gandhi
Abstract
As medicines are mostly chemical and once it expires it usually becomes a toxic agent. Therefore United States Food & Drug Administration initiated 'drug take back programme' to prevent the entry of these medication into environment. But in India drug take back programme is not well developed. People are use to dispose medicines by common methods such as burning, flushing into toilet and throwing somewhere or into waste-basket which results in serious environmental and health hazards. In this review we describe methods of drug disposal recommended by WHO, medicines which should be flushed for disposal and their toxic effects, consequences of improper drug disposal and safe guidelines for disposal. An expert opinion has also mentioned at the last for safe disposal of expired or unused medicines at home.