Is it too early for spring cleaning?
You may want to check the expiration dates on your medicine cabinet products — with some experts saying outdated pills will harm your health.
“Depending on the product, it can be dangerous to use them after their expiry date,” pharmacist Deborah Grayson told the Daily Mail.
“While some are more worrying than others, always be on the safe side and check that your pills and creams are in date before using them.”
The lowest risk products include drugs like ibuprofen that have been stored in “blister packs” instead of bottles because “oxygen won’t be able to get in” to the packaging.
“While they may be safe for a few months outside their expiry date, the effect will likely be reduced,” Grayson warned.
Similarly, medications like antidepressants and antihistamines aren’t harmful to your health if you take them post-expiry, although they may just be less effective. Expired vitamins also become ineffective, but aren’t toxic.
Adhesive bandages, however, could become less sterile if they are expired — and they become less sticky.
“If all you have is out-of-date dressings, then I would still use them, but replace with in-date products as soon as possible,” Grayson said.
She added that old antibiotics could make you sick if taken after their best-by date, especially if they’re stored in bottles rather than sealed packs. Liquid antibiotics pose a higher risk of causing illness because they can become tainted with infectious bacteria, she added.
To discard prescriptions, she advised patients to visit their local pharmacy so that the medication can be disposed of safely.
The highest-risk items that could be lurking in your medicine cabinet include aspirin, which can degrade over time because of oxygen exposure. To tell if the medication is spoiled, Grayson said it will have “a potent, vinegar-like smell,” which means “it’s not good to use.”
“Consuming it could potentially cause damage to the lining of the stomach,” she warned.
Expired creams or ointments, she added, could cause an infection if applied on broken skin, according to Grayson.
“As steroids also switch off the immune response, this can increase the risk of infection,” she said.
Lastly, eye drops should be thrown away 28 days after opening, no matter the expiration date.
“Always mark your eye drops with the date you first used them, so you know when to throw them out,” she explained, adding that opened bottles of cough syrup should also be tossed after six months.
