mercredi 18 novembre 2015

Crucial Guidelines To Consider Regarding Pharmaceutical Disposal

By Mattie Knight


Are you planning to get rid of some pharmaceutical products for one reason or the other but you have no idea of how to go about it? There are a number if things you should know. Pharmaceutical disposal entails the process of discarding medicines that have expired or the purpose for which they were meant has already been fulfilled. From the household to medical institutions, a specific system is needed for disposal of these drugs. In California, most drugs used by individual consumers can easily be thrown away together with the general trash.

An example of situations where drugs have to be disposed in large amounts is donations made by companies to regions that have been hit by certain calamities. These disaster stricken areas may lack the necessary resources to store the drugs and sometimes the cargo may arrive close to the date of expiry. Even when they come in early, long before due date, the people on the ground may take advantage of the durability and mismanage the drugs. Other than that, instructions may be written in a foreign language or the medication may not be suitable for those affected.

For the above reasons, guidelines have to be used with regard to management of drugs for donation. Pharmaceuticals must ensure the due date for expiry of donations is no less than one year unless they have assurance that their recipients have the capacity to effectively store the medicines. They must also ensure that the drugs are relevant to those meant to utilize them.

Any method can be used for disposal on condition that keeps the environment safe from pollution. Improvisation can be done in countries that are not able to afford more advanced methods such as incineration which is commonly used in industrialized regions. Very high temperatures of above one thousand two hundred degrees Celsius are necessary for effective incineration.

Before anything else, protective equipment must be adorned. Some of these equipment may include overalls, masks, gloves among others. In methods that require pondering capsules or tablets, face masks come in handy to protect the eyes from splashes. Once one is fully protected, sorting begins. Sorting entails separating drugs that may still be portable from those that require disposal.

Land filling is one of the cost effective methods used in disposal. It entails dumping of solid waste at a given location directly without any initial preparation of the land or treatment of the waste. A disadvantage of this method though affordable is environmental exposure to pollution. Also, in term s of drug disposal, certain medication such as narcotics may be picked by scavengers at the site and reintroduced into the market.

An alternative method of disposal is immobilization, a process that entails accumulating drugs within a metallic cylinder or plastic bag. These medicines fill three quarters of the space and the rest of the space filled with semi solid substances such as cement, lime among other ideal substances. One important precaution that should be observed prior to filling is ensuring that the containers contain no explosives.

There are drugs that can simply be flushed down the toilet or sink. Some of this may include intravenous fluids and syrups. An exception to this are antibiotics that are not capable of being biodegraded as they interfere with the treatment process of the sewerage systems. Disposal of anticancer drugs into water systems is also contraindicated as it causes contamination and destruction of aquatic life.




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