Post-Holiday Cleanse

Post-Holiday Cleanse
Originally uploaded by 365 Things

What: Vintage Betadine
Origin: It was on an outfitter's list of mandatory first aid products I was to bring on a trip to Nepal. (Uh, so we could scrub for surgery? I'm clueless about what we might have used it for, although some of it is gone.)
Last Used: Aargh, the expiration date was 3/99.
Why Kept: I never stopped to think about whether Betadine could expire.  In my mind, it was Perfectly Good.  Also, a little bit OOSOOM -- it was in a medicine cabinet that I don't open too frequently.   Though I do purge my medicine cabinets a few times a year:  this one's a survivor.
Destination: Flushed. I'll recycle the bottle (it's got a neck, one of the criteria for "recyclables" here in NYC).

Confession: This bottle's carbon footprint stinks. It has flown round trip to Nepal several times, and been hauled around on the back of various yaks in the mountains. I traveled to Nepal several times in the 1990s. We left lots of our medications with a clinic in the Khumbu region; it's a very poor country, and even half used prescription medicine was accepted by the MDs at the clinic. I'm stumped as to why I would have brought this home, rather than donating it.

Bonus:   Maybe my bowl has been sanitized?   I'm not all that convinced that the ingredients in Betadine would actually expire; if I remembered any of the chemistry I took in college, I'd surely know the half-life of iodine.

But I digress:  either it's expired, or it deserved to go based on not having been used in this century.   Either way, it's out of my house.