Take Back Your Meds

Take Back Your Meds Videos
Note: all of the following links lead to external sites.

Margaret Shield on Q13 Fox

Margaret Shield with King County’s Local Hazardous Waste Management Program tells people how to safely dispose of their unwanted medicines.

Don’t Flush Me Bro!

• What’s in your drinking water? A study found that 24 major cities had medicines in their drinking water, including heart medication, mood-stabilizers, anti-cholesterol, tranquilizers, over-the-counter pain reliever and antibiotics.
• Over 20% of high school students have taken medicine for a non-medical reason.
• Find out about our work to create a statewide medicine take-back program.
• Watch the video…

The Horror

• Crushing pills and mixing them with kitty litter or coffee grounds doesn’t reduce their toxicity and they can still hurt the environment.
• Trash disposal is not secure. Medicines can be stolen from the trash.
• Pets can get into the trash, eat the drugs and get poisoned. The Animal Poison Control Center handled more than 46,000 cases in the U.S. of pets exposed to medicines.
• Watch the video…

The Band

• Medicines mixed with kitty litter and thrown in the trash are not destroyed -- they are still chemically active.
• Medicines have been found in landfill leachate -- "garbage juice" -- that in some landfills is pumped to the sanitary sewer and then discharged out to our waters.
• the safest way to dispose of medicines is to use a medicine take-back program
• Washington needs a statewide medicine take back program!
• Watch the video…

Unwanted Guest

• 32% of child poisonings deaths in Washington were caused by someone else’s prescription medication and 26% were caused by over-the-counter medications.
• Medicine cabinets are the new drug dealer. More than three out of five teens say prescription pain relievers are easy to get from their parents’ or grandparent’s medicine cabinet.
• Almost 12% of Washington state teens use medicines to get high.
• Watch the video…