Australia's Science Forum

Hi All
As I am doing a HUGE clean out I have come across some very old tablets and medications. These include different types of vitamins and herbal tablets, various types of asprin and paracetamol, osteoeze, sinus relief meds, and other prescription medication (such as aratac 200, Urex, Curam, Anpec, Metformin), and I am unsure as to what to keep and what should be tossed, they are all out of date. Curam is the only medication that tells me it has amoxycillin in it, the others I have no idea what they are for, let alone trying to justify keeping them. My other question is, are they stored on NR shelf? as the only thing I can find is asprin, is 7-12 NR.
Thanks for your help,
cheers
Lisa

We use these pills in senoir science along with others.Ours only get used once a year for 1 pract.I store these in my chem store in the food bay.They have all the warnings printed on the sides of the boxes so they dont need lables, and as for the colored dots.....cause they are not listed in the manual ive put red dots on the boxes to be safe than sorry.

I'd be asking the teachers if they have any reason why the medications should be kept, and if they can't come up with any good ones take them to a chemist/pharmacy for disposal. I'm pretty sure prescrition medicines should not be thrown out with ordinary rubbish but I could be wrong.

Thanks for your responses, I was thinking min orange dot, but red is probably better. If I ask the teacher who has 'kept' them he will tell me they are ALL needed, but I know they havent been used in 3 years, and we wont be doing senior science in the next few years, some of them date back to 1983!!! I will get rid of the bulk of them and I have a friend who is a pharmacist, so I will ask her about the correct disposal.
thanks again
cheers
Lisa

Could you please let us know of the correct disposal. I would like to know.

Thanks

I may be wrong but the medications such as aspirin we use instead of marble chips and hydrochloric acid for testing surface area. The medications with enterric coating and aspirin is used in Senior science to test simulated stomach pH so it doesn't really matter if the active ingredients work , just the purpose of the differing dissolving times. Don't if this helps (brain still a bit foggy this morning) but I hope it does!
Lou.

Hi Again

I have spoken to my Pharmacist friend, to dipose of unwanted and old medications, put them in a plastic bag and take to your local pharmacist, they have a collection bin, when it is full is taken away and disposed of correctly. Thanks for everyones suggestions and I hope this has also helped you out.

cheers
Lisa