# What to do with a bottle of expired Tylenol

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-a-bottle-of-expired-tylenol/574702>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 14, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-a-bottle-of-expired-tylenol/574702 "2011-03-14T21:36:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2011, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-a-bottle-of-expired-tylenol/574702/21 "2011-03-17T02:50:35Z")

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> [@A.Gwilliam](#):
>
> Surely the explanation as to why this isn’t done is that it would be an outstandingly expensive exercise of negligible benefit? Not to mention the ethical difficulties: you would have to try these drugs out on real people, after all!

No, there’d be no clinical trials needed to extend stability testing, but you’re correct that the cost of a stability test can be expensive. IIRC one contract company I worked for charged about $150/hour for “physical appearance” testing, which was always billed as an hour and actually took about 15 seconds. The cost was insane, not to mention the cost of the stability chambers, which are very expensive to run and maintain. And a failure or out-of-spec result basically doubled or tripled the cost of any one test, at least, in order to do the analysis to see if it really was the drug product and not a lab/instrumentation/human error.

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**Author:** ![hocow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hocow/32/4112_2.png) [@hocow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hocow)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-a-bottle-of-expired-tylenol/574702/23 "2011-11-16T10:26:54Z")

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Reported spam post.

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**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-to-do-with-a-bottle-of-expired-tylenol/574702/24 "2011-11-16T13:05:03Z")

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**rahnjacey** , did you read the post? The expiration date is 2003. I think it is safe to conclude it is way past 1 year.

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