This Saturday, September 25, the World Pharmacist Day was celebrated.
From these pages today I want to congratulate my colleagues and, taking advantage of the occasion, talk about the risks of the famous domestic kit.
And it is that there is the one who treasures in his home the most assorted kites than the reboots of many pharmacies.
On the one hand, we have the authentic ‘guys Gilito’ of Paracetamol and, on the other, to those who confuse the Sigre point with the clean point and abandon their fate in the pharmacies objects and goodbye that no one would believe.
I do not know which of the two species is more dangerous.
Jokes aside, the objective is to guarantee the rational use of the medication, but also environmental security and sustainability.
It is essential to become aware of how to manage these waste because our planet in general, and our fish in particular, are already suffering.
Surprise: The best place to keep the kit is not the bathroom or the kitchen
Although in many homes the bathroom and the kitchen are their natural habitat, it is an error because these are precisely the rooms in which more changes in temperature and humidity occur.
The kit must be in a fresh, dry and preserved site of the light so that the properties of the medications are not altered.
It is important that it is beyond the reach of children … and no key!
Yes, the key is not necessary.
Then it is lost and when you give a chungo or slice your finger with the knife everything is rushed.
Fish can end up drinking contraceptives
Medications are framed within “emerging organic pollutants”.
The translation is that they can cause environmental and health risks if they end up in love and company with domestic garbage or they are thrown happily with the drain.
It is common that when analyzing the waters, analgesic, antimicrobial, antidepressants, contraceptive or antiparasitic residues are found.
And this has consequences that can become surprising.
For example, if male fish or amphibians are exposed at low concentrations of the main asset of the contraceptive pill, ethinylestradiol, can suffer a feminization process due to the effects on the endocrine system.
It is not necessary to study biology to intuit that a change as well may affect the capacity of the fish to reproduce.
It’s going on.
Point SIGRE: The importance of recycling
Sigre means integrated management and packaging collection system.
Thanks to pharmacies it is a system is very efficient because the same distributors that each day bring drugs to the pharmacy can take advantage of the return trip to return these residues.
This is called a reverse logistics system and saves the planet nothing more and no less than 1400 tons of CO2 each year.
Paradox: medications are recycled “whole”, not by parts
Although recycling the box or the leaflet in the house paper container seems the most logical thing, it is not really like that.
Cardboard boxes and drug containers, already have drug remains or be empty, should not be thrown into the home.
Neither the Blue Container the elements of paper, neither the yellow parts that are plastic, or green, if it is, for example, of glass syrups.
Why is it what the body asks us?
First, because all containers and elements can contain drug remains that have been adhered.
And, secondly, because at the point Sigure the medications are separated to recycle as they are one or the other.
Boxes and prospects serve to be able to identify the different medications and give them the correct recycling treatment.
It is not the same to identify a red capsule that goes by ‘loose’ that if you travel within your metamizole container.
What we can recycle at the point Sigre
We can (and we must go to point Sigure expired medications, medications that we no longer need because it was left over (eye, because for example with antibiotics you have to finish the pattern), boxes of medicines and empty containers or with remains.
In any case, if there are doubts, all drug containers marketed in Spain through the pharmacy offices have been incorporated into the SIGRE symbol.
What we can not recycle at the Sigre point
And this is where the confusion arrives.
No needle syringes should be introduced at the point (only the insulin pens, with cap), ni thermometers, batteries or radiographs (you must leave them in collection system or clean dots enabled), no gauze and dressings (go on the trash
Domestic organic), nor prosthetics (such as dentures) or chemical products.
Point anecdotes Sigre: panties, frozen peas and up mobile with magazine
After asking several classmates what it is the strangest thing they had found at their point Sigre, the first thing they told me is the importance of clarifying their name: apparently there are people who enters the pharmacy asking for the “G point”.
Once the denomination is clarified, in the universe of fantastic elements found at the point Sigre by pharmacists, reality exceeds fiction: Middle Sandwiches, Panties ‘of Major Ladier’, Spoons Speakers, Hearing Aids, Charger, Controls
Distance, cassette tapes with the great hits of marisol, antipolillate hangers, bird feed, frozen peas bag that had applied in a swollen eye (it should be for that of the therapeutic use) and my favorite: a container for urine sample.
.. with sample included.
The anecdotes are friendly, but the problem is real: we need more citizen awareness about the recycling of medicines.
And, of course, we also need an extra applause for pharmacists and all those who manage the Sigre point.
Patience, colleagues!
