Think Twice Before Flushing Old Medicines Down The Toilet

Cleaning out your medicine cabinet can leave you in a predicament when finding heavy-duty medications that have expired. With medicines like painkillers, you don't want to put them in the regular garbage where pets or even people might get them. However, you may want to reconsider throwing them in your toilet, as it could cause a lot of damage.

If you pour a bottle of pills in your toilet — or worse yet, a few bottles of pills — a clog can easily form. Though it's easy to think that anything small can be flushed down a toilet, quite the opposite is true. In fact, the only items that should ever be flushed should be waste material and toilet paper. 

Even seemingly innocent items like tissues and napkins can clog your toilet. It's easy to see that a bottle of hardened pills can do similar damage. A build-up of medication can result not only in a toilet clog, but it's also possible to cause a sewer backup.

Besides the risk of clogs, throwing pills in the toilet can work in another biological way that can wreak havoc on your sewer system. This is especially true with antibiotics. After all, antibiotics are prescribed to kill bacteria in the body, and they will do the same in wastewater.

This can be very harmful to your septic tank because it's vital that a septic tank has the right balance of bacteria in order to break down harmful waste. Besides antibiotics, chemotherapy pills can also affect bacteria levels. When the bad bacteria take over, the result could be a malfunctioning septic tank. That can spell big trouble and a lot of money in repair bills.

According to the FDA, the best way to dispose of most medications is to throw them in the garbage. Before you do, remove them from the bottle or container they came in and mix them with substances that are unpleasant and unassuming, like cat litter or coffee grounds. Then, place the medication in a sealed can or a plastic bag and throw it out with regular trash.