Why do some prescription and non-prescription medication bottles contain cotton and other do not?

Originally it was thought that it would protect them from humidity.

But the cotton just absorbs any moisture and then you have damp cotton balls on top of your meds.

The more efficient thing nowadays is to include small little dessicant packs or capsules. These are smaller versions of what they put in with electronics to guard them from moisture.

The capsule ones usually have a warning printed on them to not swallow them :)

The cotton takes up extra room, and acts as a buffer to make sure they don’t shake around and possibly break. Some pills don’t need that help as much.

I’ve not seen cotton wool in a medicine bottle for years…but I reckon it is to do with rattling pills. If they are brittle, then you don’t want them rattling and breaking up because you couldn’t be sure of finding the right bits and may overdose. Maybe pills are more sturdy these days so the rattle not so much of a problem. Or they are capsules rather than pills. Or come in a blister pack instead.

Cotton wool can certainly be sterile – it’s often used in hospitals to clean a wound, isn’t it?

Stinley, thanks for giving the proper name for this cotton…...it’s cotton wool.

@john65pennington happy to unintentionally oblige :-)

Edit: oops, just saw that @Buttonstc already said what I said.

@laureth is correct. The cotton prevent or reduces the chance for fragile pills to bang around the bottle and turn back into the powder from whence they came.

Cotton is a packing medium to keep the pills from breaking during shipment. Other pill manufacturers probably aren’t too concerned with breakage.