I had left it in the front pocket of a shirt. The card and the blisters seem intact, I see no water in the bubbles but there could be micro-fissures that caused the water and detergent to come into contact with the pills. Is there a risk that they have lost their properties ?
It’s not some life-saving drug, but it’s quite pricey. I’d hate to have to throw the card away. However, I’ll do so if necessary, of course.
Would be a good question to ask the pharmacist you got the pills from. They’d be more able to tell if the medication was still effective.
I sure understand about not wanting to willy-nilly throw out an expensive medication if it is not needed.
If the pill hasn’t gotten wet enough to lose its shape, it would be tempting to just use it since you’re going to get it wet any way when you swallow it with water, but check with a pharmacist.
I can’t imagine “micro fissures” that would allow just an invisible smidge of water into the package. If it fails at all while going through a wash cycle, I think it would fail all the way. Conversely, if there was some amount of water or detergent that got in but was too small to visibly detect, I can’t imagine it being enough to do harm. Plus, a package with “micro fissures” would be comprised by nature even if it was only ever exposed to air.
For the win! Also, the pharmacy might have some sort of exchange policy. Doesn’t hurt to ask.
The fact that they still look intact, probably means that they didn’t get wet.
Just for curiosity, did they also go in the dryer?
Yeah, temperature might also be an issue.
Joining in the chorus: ask the pharmacist.
ETA: The pharmacist has probably heard this one before.
All right, it seems crystal clear, I’ll ask a pharmacist (the one I bought them from is in another town). Thanks for the answers.
For the record I “washed” them at 104°, no tumble drying.
In other words, just a few degrees above the body temperature they were exposed to for hours while in a shirt pocket.
That’s probably not an issue unless there’s an explicit temperature sensitivity warning in the circular.
Yeah, it was more the possibility of water and detergent getting in that I was concerned about.
If it’s not a pill you absolutely need to be 100% effective each time it’s taken than I would just take the one that went through the wash and forget about it. At worst it’s like not taking the pill, at best it is like taking a good pill that works.
A blister is a pretty damn good seal. One test I’ve seen done - I can’t remember if it was a batch release test or not - is to submerge the pack in an aqueous solution of dye and pull a partial vacuum on it - then release the vacuum to see if there is water ingress. Just sayin’. If it was me, I’d use them unless there was an obvious reason not to.
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Funny this should come up.
I recently washed & dried a loratadine tablet which was in a single-tablet foil/plastic peel-open pouch thingy in a pants pocket. In use, those tablets are meant to simply sit on your wet tongue and dissolve in a couple seconds.
It appeared totally intact under the transparent dome. Had even a teeny hint of moisture made it into the dome, the tablet would almost have been mush or a misshapen blob in the corner. Visually it was fine. So evidently undamaged by moisture intrusion, which would also necessarily include detergent intrusion.
That leaves heat as the only possible mode of degradation. How hot was my “warm” water wash and my “normal” tumble dry plus a second timed dry to de-wrinkle the clothes? Based on comments above, probably not much warmer than something riding around in my dark pants pocket on a summer day here in FL. Surviving which is obviously a design goal of the product.
I know I don’t know if heat has damaged the chemistry functionally, but I put the pill & pouch back in the box and intend to eat it the next time I need what it offers.
I would not hesitate to take the medication in this case. Consider that you could leave it in a parked car in August, where it will probably hit well over 120F. As for water/detergent, if it’s not visible, it’s not enough to hurt anything. Remember, kids ate Tide pods and didn’t (all) die…
In the interests of science I just threw a blister pack of paracetamol in with my wash. They came out dry as a bone.
Just as an aside I used to do private nursing for a wealthy guy that owned a pharmaceutical company. He once remarked to me that the blister packs for his company’s aspirin tablets cost more than the tablets themselves.