14/08/2026
Feeling the heat in the heatwave.. so are your medicines.
With temperatures rising to 38 degrees, are your medicines still safe?
In most cases, yes. Medicines are tested to be stored at the stated temperatures such as 25 degrees up to their expiry date. But most households are usually cooler than this at around 8-20 degrees. Temperature effects the rate at which drugs degrade so higher temperatures usually mean more degradation, and cooler less. Manufacturers understand this and as medicines are generally stored lower than the recommended temperature, a few days of high temperature usually will have little impact on drugs with several years of expiry time remaining. This has been studied in depth and even temperatures as high as 40 degrees for 1 week may only reduce the expiry date by about 8 weeks compared to storing at 25 degrees. As most househoulds are cooler than this on average, there is actually little change to the expiry date for long expiry products.
Drugs with short expiry however will be affected, such as if the expiry date printed is within a few weeks, short expiry products such as open eye drops, insulins in use and freshly made drugs such as some liquid antibiotics. Try and store these in a cooler dry place in the house. Only store drugs in the fridge if it says this on the label as storing in the fridge incorrectly can also have an adverse effect due to moisture build up.
Enjoy the weather and your medication safely.
reference: NHS Pharmaceutical QA Committee (1st Edition) Risk Management of Medicines Stored in Clinical Areas: Temperature Control
