Capital Chemist Pharmacist Amanda Galbraith holding antibiotic eye drops. Amanda talks about how people should abide by expiry dates on medications and eye drops. Photo: Melissa Adams
Most people wouldn’t put sour milk, rotten meat or mouldy bread near their mouth, but what about expired medicines?
What about those headache tablets in your handbag, the eye drops you can’t remember when you opened, last year’s cold and flu tablets or that ointment which has been in your medicine cabinet for who knows how long?
It is almost impossible to know just by looking at a medication whether it has passed its use-by date, but experts say expiry dates for medications are just as, if not more, important to abide by than those, say, for food.
Associate Professor of Pharmacy Greg Kyle, from the University of Canberra’s health faculty, said an expiry date was the final day the full potency and safety of a medication was guaranteed.