Why Are Prescription Bottles Orange?
You see them at almost any pharmacy; you probably even have a few of them in your medicine cabinet: orange prescription bottles that contain anything from antibiotics to painkillers, antidepressants to anti-inflammatories.
While orange is not the only color of prescription bottles--there are other colors and opaque white ones--orange is likely to be the most popular color of prescription bottle.
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Why are They Colored?
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The primary reason for orange-colored prescription bottles--and any colored or opaque prescription bottle, for that matter--is to prevent light from degrading the medicines inside through photochemical reactions. Many substances--milk, beer, medications--degrade with exposure to light. And so to preserve the medication's effectiveness, prescription bottles are created with the intention of keeping light away from the medicines.
The Apothecary
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Before plastics were widespread, and pharmacies had high-tech equipment to make and store medications, ingredients for medicines, ointments, even poisons were stored in ceramic or glass containers, the latter becoming more popular over time as they were more durable and were mass-produced.
The ingredients had to be stored in large bottles--"shop furniture" bottles that apothecaries used to hold important chemicals or other elements used in making tonics, medicines and sometimes poisons. However, photochemical reactions would render these ingredients unusable over time, and so to help preserve them, colored bottles were used.
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Bottle Colors
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Glass apothecary bottles Clear bottles and jars were often used as well, but bottle colors ranged in color. There were aquas, cobalt blues, purples, reds and greens, and some greens that got so dark as to be considered black.
However, amber became a popular color for bottles and jars, because it gave medicines sufficient protection and cost less to produce than other colored glass bottles.
From Amber to Orange
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It's likely that the reason the popular color of prescription bottles is orange is because it's a modern-day extension of the amber-colored bottle. People have so long associated amber-colored bottles and apothecary jars with medicines, that orange is a nod to that tradition.
The ubiquity and widespread use of the orange prescription bottles has also made them easily recognizable. When people see a small orange cylindrical bottle, they make the quick assumption that the contents are medicines. Bright orange bottles also seem easier to locate when searching through cabinets, drawers and purses for medications.
Other Colors
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Orange is not the only color. There are clear ones, for medicines that don't degrade in light.
There are also blue ones, dark brown ones, green ones and opaque ones. Recently, a prescription bottle has been designed by a graphic design student who wanted to find a way to easier label and distinguish one medication from another. The bottle is red, to match the signature red color of the Target stores, which have adopted the new prescription bottle color and label design.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Lee Nachtigal Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of gailf548
