Incorrectly disposing of expired medication dangerous, warns expert

CAPE TOWN - Flushing expired medication down your toilet can expose sewers to harmful pharmaceutical by-products and pose a risk to the environment.

Professor Renier Coetzee at the University of Western Cape (UWC)'s School of Public Health and vice president of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa said that incorrectly disposing of expired medication was dangerous.

Coetzee warned that the expired medication could find its way back to humans.

"So what we know is when those antibiotics, for example, go into our rivers, even our farmers often use that water to feed their cattle, or their chickens and they go to the slaughterhouses and eventually small amounts of that can enter a human body."

He explained how disposing of medication in drainage systems could affect sea life.  

"So we found some anti-inflammatories, so pain medicine, we found HIV medicine, we found antibiotics in small amounts in the fish in the sea kelp, sea orchids and starfish, so it's really a big concern."