Syringes are medical tools used by doctors or nurses to inject fluid into, or withdraw fluid from the body. They come in many sizes, but all have the same basic shape – a needle attached to a hollow cylinder that is fitted with a plunger. Downward movement of the plunger injects fluid, upwards withdraws it. A syringe can be used for many purposes, but most of the time it is used to give someone a flu shot, or to take a blood sample.
A syringe can be made from metal or plastic. It must be cleaned and sterilized before it can be used again. This process takes time and resources, and since they are so expensive to sterilize the doctors prefer to use disposable ones. This is why a syringe has an expiration date on it. This is when it will no longer be safe to use.
It is important to know when a syringe expires, and why, as this will help you keep track of when it is no longer safe to use. If you have diabetes, it is especially important to pay attention to the expiration dates of your insulin needles and bottles.
A syringe will usually have an expiration date printed on the outside of the package, or the label inside the bottle. This is not an indication that the syringe will become infected after that date, it simply means that the manufacturer can no longer guarantee that the syringe will remain sterile past this point. This is because things like changing temperatures, air pressure, humidity during hold time and even mechanical vibration during shipping can all break down the seal on a syringe and let bacteria in.