While PharmacyChecker.com’s main focus is on safe and affordable prescription medication, we are aware that many of our website visitors also take over-the-counter (OTC) products. It’s important to bring to their attention safety issues with OTC products, as we have done in the past. We want to point out that some popular OTC medicines in the United States are being recalled due to potentially serious manufacturing flaws, as reported by the FDA and featured on MSNBC.com.

OTC meds manufactured at Novartis Consumer Health Inc. in its Lincoln, Nebraska plant may have been mixed with dangerous painkiller medication, such as Percocet, Endocet, Opana and Zydone. While the mixture dose is said to be minimal, Novartis Health is voluntarily recalling some select bottle sizes of Excedrin, No Doz, Bufferin and Gas-x Prevention since there may be some stray tablets or capsules and/or could contain broken or chipped tablets.

If you have these medications, be sure to check the manufactured date and location properly, and take a look inside the bottle itself too, before taking them. The medicine may need to be discarded or returned to the manufacturer for a refund. See below for details from the manufacturer.

Note from Novartis-OTC.com: Novartis Consumer Health (NCH) is voluntarily recalling all lots of select bottle sizes of Excedrin® and NoDoz® products with expiry dates of December 20, 2014 or earlier as well as Bufferin® and Gas-X® Prevention® products with expiry dates of December 20, 2013 or earlier, in the United States.