Clear out expired medicines and leftovers you will not use, on a regular schedule, and put them in the hazardous-waste bin with the packaging; do not keep them at home

In the United States, of the medicines a child swallowed without an adult watching, nearly half were prescription tablets. Of those prescription medicines, about 3 in 10 belonged to a grandparent. Clearing out medicines you will not use removes something a child can find. Put the cleared-out medicine, packaging and all, into the hazardous-waste bin, or hand it to a pharmacy that takes old medicines.

Cost

No money. Go through the medicine box once a year. It takes a little over 10 minutes.

Benefit

US emergency-department surveillance estimates that from 2004 to 2013, children under 6 who swallowed a medicine without an adult watching made about 640000 emergency visits (the estimate is 640161). In 2013 alone there were about 59000 (59092). From 2010 to 2013, the most common form was an oral prescription tablet, 45.9%. Among prescription drugs, the most common were opioid painkillers (13.8%) and benzodiazepines, sedative drugs used for sleep and calming (12.7%). In 2017, 5 US poison-control centers asked parents who called for help. When a child swallowed a prescription drug, 30.7% of the time it was a grandparent's medicine. More than half (51.5%) of the prescription drugs had already been taken out of the original packaging by an adult before the child got them. China's National Catalogue of Hazardous Wastes (2025 edition) lists waste medicines produced in ordinary household life, and their packaging, as hazardous waste within domestic garbage. Shanghai's sorting guide puts waste medicines in hazardous waste. The guide states that waste medicines include expired drugs, drug capsules, tablets, and the inner packaging, and that "waste medicines should preferably be put out together with the packaging." Shanghai also requires that expired household medicines collected by pharmacies go to a temporary transfer point set up by the market supervision administration of each district. The US FDA says the best way to deal with expired and unwanted medicines is to hand them to a take-back point.

Notes

Waste-sorting lists are not the same everywhere. Follow the list posted at the building's waste room. In Shanghai, the dregs of traditional Chinese medicine go in wet waste, and they do not count as hazardous waste. Keep the medicines you still use in the original box. Do not tip them into a pill organizer or another bottle. Put them where a child cannot reach them. See section 13, item 20 (accidental ingestion). Do not take leftover antibiotics at home on your own either. See item 7 of this section (antibiotics). When there is no take-back point, the US advice is to mix the medicine into coffee grounds or cat litter, seal the bag, and throw it in ordinary trash. A few strong painkillers are allowed to be flushed down the toilet. That is the US practice. In China, sort the waste the way the local rules say. The grade is B because those US figures are only a registry. No study has calculated how many accidental swallows clearing the medicine box would prevent. The benefit is rated small: the figures in hand are emergency visits, not deaths, and they cannot show the effect of the clearing itself.

Sources · 6

1. Lovegrove MC, Weidle NJ, Budnitz DS (2015). Trends in Emergency Department Visits for Unsupervised Pediatric Medication Exposures, 2004-2013. Pediatrics, 136(4):e821-e829. doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-2092
2. Agarwal M, Lovegrove MC, Geller RJ, et al. (2020). Circumstances Involved in Unsupervised Solid Dose Medication Exposures among Young Children. Journal of Pediatrics, 219:188-195.e6. doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2019.12.027
3. 生态环境部等 (2024). 国家危险废物名录（2025年版），附录《危险废物豁免管理清单》第 1 项. gov.cn/gongbao/2025/issue_11906/202503/conten…
4. 上海市绿化和市容管理局 (2024). 上海市生活垃圾分类投放指引（2024版）（沪绿容〔2024〕278号）. shanghai.gov.cn/gwk/search/content/40b9feaa-5…
5. 上海市绿化和市容管理局、上海市环境保护局、上海市食品药品监督管理局 (2018). 关于规范生活垃圾分类有害垃圾全程管理的通知. shanghai.gov.cn/nw12344/20200813/0001-12344_5…
6. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2025). Where and How to Dispose of Unused Medicines. fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/where-and-…