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FDA urges proper disposal of unused or expired medications
Author(s) -
Knopf Alison
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent psychopharmacology update
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7567
pISSN - 1527-8395
DOI - 10.1002/cpu.30588
Subject(s) - dispose pattern , accidental , medicine , food and drug administration , drug , intensive care medicine , drug administration , medical emergency , accidental poisoning , ingestion , fentanyl , environmental health , business , pharmacology , poison control , injury prevention , waste management , engineering , physics , acoustics , endocrinology
Unused or expired medicines in the home have long been a major safety concern. For example, data calls suggest that from 2015–2019 a variety of medications were implicated in some of the most common, and the most severe, cases of accidental ingestion of household substances by children. These data also indicate that calls to poison control centers during this time showed that pain medications were the single most frequent cause of pediatric fatalities. Drug take back programs offer a valuable opportunity for protection. For many years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strongly supported work to expand the availability of drug take back programs. These programs, many of which are run in local communities, can help people dispose of unused or expired medicines that can be potentially lethal — such as fentanyl patches, which are so potent that even a used patch touched by a child can lead to death.