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SwRI study finds medication degradation in NASA's plastic bag storage method

Southwest Research InstituteJun 2 2026

29d ago· 3 min readenNews

science health

Summary

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) conducted a study evaluating NASA's medication handling practices, which currently involve removing medications from original packaging and storing them in resealable plastic bags. The research found that within two months, active ingredients in one common antibiotic completely degraded, while ingredients in two other medications showed measurable degradation. The study used high-performance liquid chromatography over six months, though it was limited to Earthly conditions and a small sample of medications, not accounting for space conditions like radiation.

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bskySwRI study finds medication degradation in NASA's plastic bag storage methodow.ly

Key quotes

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While the study was limited to Earthly conditions, we found that within two months, active ingredients in one common antibiotic were completely degraded while ingredients in two other medications degraded measurably.

SwRI scientists performed periodic high-performance liquid chromatography analyses on the medicines over six months.

Although the research was limited to a small sample of medications and did not account for space conditions, such as radiation...

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Southwest Research Institute evaluated NASA's medication handling practices, which currently call for removing medications from their original packaging and storing them in resealable plastic bags.

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