Your Prescription Medications May Work Well Beyond the Expiration Date
You have a severe headache, but this is the only medicine that expired six months ago. Should I take it or throw it away? The jury is still out, but a recent ProPublica investigation found most drugs still work after the indicated expiration date, although it does not advise consumers to take expired drugs. Some of the drugs they tested did indeed expire, but most of them expired 5.5 years after that date, and some even worked for up to 20 years after that date.
“Expiry date” does not mean a strict expiration date for a product; rather, it is the date that the FDA and pharmaceutical companies guarantee the effectiveness of drugs – there has never been a single case of people being harmed by taking expired drugs. When determining the expiration date, drug manufacturers check how well a drug degrades when exposed to heat and moisture. The FDA then checks that data to make sure it’s accurate, but pharmaceutical companies don’t need to check if drugs are valid beyond their expiration date, so many expiration dates are earlier than they should be.
On a larger scale, pharmacies discard drugs after their expiration date, even if they are rare or expensive. Throwing away drugs that are technically still usable encourages waste, which is one of the reasons why healthcare in the US is so expensive .
The FDA has an expiration date program that checks to see if certain drugs have expiration dates that can be extended. In 2006, the program extended the shelf life of two-thirds of the drugs tested , with an average of each drug being extended more than four years after its original expiration date. Longer drug expiry dates have saved pharmacies and the government billions of dollars, but one problem is that extending drug expiration dates could reduce drug manufacturers’ margins and drive up drug prices.
As for whether or not you should take expired aspirin, it’s not the end of the world if you do. Just don’t risk drugs that your life depends on , like the Epi-Pen.
The Myth About the Shelf Life of Medicines | ProPublica