Incorrectly discarding the dangerous expired medication, an expert warns

Cabo del Cabo – Flushing Medication expired by its toilet can expose the sewers to harmful pharmaceutical by -products and represent a risk to the environment.

Professor Renier Coetzee, of the School of Public Health of the University of Cabo Occidental (UWC) and vice president of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa, said that the incorrect elimination of the 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 to our rivers, even our farmers often use that water to feed their cattle, or their chickens and go to the slaughterhouses and, finally, small amounts of that can enter a human body.”

He explained how the elimination of medication in drainage systems could affect marine life.

“So we find some anti -inflammatory, so pain medicine, we find medicine against HIV, we find antibiotics in small quantities in fish in the sea algae, the orchids of the sea and the sea stars, so it is really a great concern.”