Oskaloosa PD Helps Take Back Drugs
Officer Charlie Valentine stands ready to help residents dispose of their unwanted prescription medications Saturday
Oskaloosa, Iowa – It’s a common occurrence after a surgery or other medical treatment to have extra medication left over. Many times these items will sit in cupboards, or find their way into the trash.
Charlie Valentine with the Oskaloosa PD took up station Saturday morning, and into the afternoon, in the parking lot of Mahaska Drug to help collect those unwanted/unneeded medications. There he recounted a situation that happened in Oskaloosa not so long ago, where a person had knocked on a homeowners door to use the bathroom, only to have the homeowner discover that prescription medications were then missing.
Why not just throw them away or flush them down the toilet. Those are all acceptable forms of disposal in some cases, but the FDA has recently advised residents to use Drug Take-Back Programs to help eliminated possible environmental impacts those medications may have. A study by the U.S. Geological survey dating back to 2000 shows that 80 percent of the rivers and streams they sampled contained pharmaceutical contamination by such things as antibiotics, hormones, contraceptives and steroids.
A 2007 document by the FDA says that waste water treatment plants also are not able to help filter out the contamination from drugs. “Most drugs are not completely absorbed or metabolized by the body, and enter the environment after passing through waste water treatment plants.”
By the days end, Valentine wrote in saying, “I am pleased to announce that the Oskaloosa Police Department collected 50 lbs of unused and unwanted prescription drugs during the prescription Drug Take-Back event.”
The event was conducted on a regional basis and Valentine expects to know not just the regional amount but also a national amount of unused and unwanted prescription drugs taken back. Taken back by those who no longer wanted them and voluntarily helped out in making these medications less accessible to those they don’t belong to.
