You have a splitting headache, but the only medicine you have expired six months ago. Should you take it or toss it out? The jury’s still out, but a recent ProPublica investigation found that most medicines still work beyond their marked expiration dates, though it stopped short of recommending that consumers go ahead and take expired drugs. A few drugs they tested did actually expire, but most expired 5.5 years past the listed date—some even worked up to 20 years after the date. “Expiration” dates don’t strictly mean a product’s expiration, but rather, are the date at which the FDA and drug companies guarantee the drugs’ effectiveness—there haven’t been any cases of people being harmed by taking expired drugs. When determining expiration dates, drug makers test how well drugs degrade under the stress of heat and moisture. The FDA then reviews this data to make sure it’s accurate, but drug companies don’t have to test if drugs work past their expiration dates, which is why a lot of expiration dates are earlier than they should be. On a larger scale, pharmacies throw away drugs once they reach their expiration dates, even if the drug is rare or expensive. Throwing out drugs that can still technically be used contributes to waste, one of the reasons why health care is so expensive in the U.S. The FDA has a Shelf Life Extension Program that tests whether certain drugs have expiration dates that could be extended. In 2006, the program extended the shelf life of two-thirds of the medicines they tested, with an average of each drug being extended more than four years past its original expiration date. Extending the expiration dates of drugs has saved billions of dollars for pharmacies and the government, but one concern is that extending expiration dates could reduce profit for drugmakers and cause the prices of drugs to increase. As for whether you should take the expired aspirin, it’s not the end of the world if you do. Just don’t risk it on drugs that your life depends on, like an Epi-Pen. Source
