# Cotton in Medicine Bottles

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cotton-in-medicine-bottles/353154>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 18, 2006, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cotton-in-medicine-bottles/353154 "2006-04-18T13:22:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cotton-in-medicine-bottles/353154/21 "2006-04-18T19:14:38Z")

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[QUOTE=postcards]  
Funny, I always thought the cotton was there to absorb any moisture that might build up in the container.

[/QUOTE]

Bingo. I’m suprised it took this long for someone to mention it, but one of the reasons for a wad of cotton in bottles of aspirin is to absorb moisture. You see, aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. In the presense of water or moisture, the bond between the acetic and salicylic acids break down and it becomes acetic acide and salicylic acid, and not aspirin. If this happens, the bottle will smell like vinegar and you should throw it out.

Though more recently, more companies use a dessicant packet to absorb moisture, and have either left out the cotton altogether, or keep it for it’s other purpose, which as said is to help the pills stay whole during transit.

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**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cotton-in-medicine-bottles/353154/22 "2006-04-18T19:51:07Z")

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[QUOTE=CalMeacham]  
Where doers this particular rancor come from? I spoke of no particular puill but aspirin, and said that my own experience was that no other of the puills I bought seemed to have cotton packed over them.

What does your “other than what?” refer to? Something other than cotton? From context it’s clear that I was asking why cotton was paxcked over aspirin (in my experience, _only_ aspirin), and I’m not asking for anything else to take its place.

Learn how to ask questions better, yourself.  
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: You said something to the effect of ‘other kinds of pills don’t come with cotton’ except you never specified what kind of pill you believed _did_ come packed with cotton. Like I said, look at your first post in the thread, read it, and see if it actually makes sense even to you. Just because you were _thinking_ about aspirin doesn’t mean you _wrote_ aspirin. We can’t read your mind, you know.

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**Author:** ![GingerOfTheNorth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cdc98d/32.png) [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cotton-in-medicine-bottles/353154/23 "2006-04-18T20:19:29Z")

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[QUOTE=Excalibre]  
Other than what? What are you talking about? Virtually all medicines that come in bottles have cotton in them in my experience, and same goes for things like vitamin pills.  
[/QUOTE]

My job involves unpacking meds from bottles. There is cotton in perhaps 60% of them. These are, of course, industrial-sized, instituion-sale-only bottles, so of course YMMV.

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