Pharmacist: Mail Order Rx Danger In The Texas Heat

TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Getting your prescriptions through a mail order service could be dangerous during this heat wave.

With many insurance carriers offering three-month supplies of medication for one co-pay, mail order prescriptions have become more popular.

Keep in mind that every prescription lists information indicating it's safe storage temperature. While some medications must be refrigerated, it's advised that most others be kept at or around room temperature.

Now think about medicine sitting on a concrete front porch with North Texas on it's 35th consecutive day of temperatures at or above 100-degrees.

But if you're not at home when your medicine arrives, the postal carrier leaves it in your mailbox or at your front door.

Pharmacist Lewis Hall of Hall Pharmacy in Fort Worth says medications begin to breakdown in extreme heat.

"In 100-degree weather, [sitting outside] for three or four hours, it could degradate the product as much as 10- or 15-percent," explained Hall.

Not only do the products degrade but Hall adds it can be dangerous for people to take blood pressure, heart and diabetes medication that don't work properly.

Medications like insulin, hormone creams and gels and antibiotics are most affected by the heat.

Hall says you may need to change your routine until the weather cools down. "Either they [prescriptions] need to be shipped properly or changed to a pharmacy that can give it to them and knowing that it's been under temperature control.

Another option is to have medications shipped to a work address.