3 years ago
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Is there any dangers taking expired over the counter medicines like Vicks? DayQuil??
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M$1 Answer
Medications are safe until their expiration date. After this time, they can deteriorate and do not work or can be harmful. Medicine (over-the-counter and prescribed) can become poisonous when it ages and may result in death.
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M$
Actually, you're way wrong. Only some medications, like antipsychotics and anticonvulsants, are dangerous to take after their expiration date. According to Richard Altschuler, over the counter drugs are safe to take until about 15 years past their expiration date.
His research found that 15 years ago the U.S. Army was throwing away about one billion dollars worth of drugs every 2 to 3 years. The Army then started a testing program to see if they could extend the life of their inventory. The testing was done by the FDA (the ones who made the law in 1979 that there had to be an expiration date on all drugs) and they found that over 100 of prescription and over the counter drugs were safe to take even 15 years after their expiration date.
"In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover.""
Source: http://allnurses.com/nursing-activism-healthcare/do-medications-really-53006.html
Sorry I even asked the question. I got a better answer myself than what anyone else could have given me.