I found several full bottles of hydrogen peroxide at my parents’ house — they were in the garage (hot in summer/freezing in winter) in their original brown plastic bottles. They are printed with expiration: Dec. 2002.
How does hydrogen peroxide “go bad”? I was thinking of using them for gardening as fungicide. Is there any reason not to?
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pepperhead212
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thanrose
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With moving from my parents' house, we had multiple bottles of HO, generally economy sized and open. I know you are supposed to keep the bottles away from light to slow breakdown of the fluid, and I know that expiration dates are barely useful.
In nursing in my state, if we had a bottle of HO opened, we had to date it when opened. Once it hits a month old, it was tossed. This is probably more for potential contamination, but we did the same for any other bottle of medical fluid if there wasn't a superseding protocol.
So I had to figure out what to do with all the bottles of HO. Siblings had enough. I saved some for me, and a backup to that. The rest of it I dumped down the drain with the earliest expiration date first. Long expired by years, opened, in a hot garage. I just dumped it in the utility sink and continued about my sorting and boxing. Two hours later, the utility sink had a mound of HO foam above the drain. Of course it had filled the trap, and then worked on accumulated muck that was down there. So much for lack of vitality due to age and poor handling.
Even if it is starting to break down, it's not going to hurt anything. As someone noted above, it's elemental.
In nursing in my state, if we had a bottle of HO opened, we had to date it when opened. Once it hits a month old, it was tossed. This is probably more for potential contamination, but we did the same for any other bottle of medical fluid if there wasn't a superseding protocol.
So I had to figure out what to do with all the bottles of HO. Siblings had enough. I saved some for me, and a backup to that. The rest of it I dumped down the drain with the earliest expiration date first. Long expired by years, opened, in a hot garage. I just dumped it in the utility sink and continued about my sorting and boxing. Two hours later, the utility sink had a mound of HO foam above the drain. Of course it had filled the trap, and then worked on accumulated muck that was down there. So much for lack of vitality due to age and poor handling.
Even if it is starting to break down, it's not going to hurt anything. As someone noted above, it's elemental.