Agree with wooker saying that the very big danger of using it is that if your gr needs it – she might find that it does not work as well as it should and she could be left with no air. But, I am not sure whether she needs it just for exercising or not. if she needs it for asthma condition then it is dangerous. However she needs it only for exercising then she either might not exercise for the period of the time that she does not have a new albuterol or even if she would then she would might experience lack of air and therefore she would stop her exercises even if she wouldn’t want to. of course I would be more concerned about that one that have expired a long time ago, generally if I would be you then I would throw that one away while the second one might still work a bit. Other than the fact that they won’t work, nothing else would happen. Indeed, there are meds that are becoming toxic after their expiration date, however albuterol inhaler is not one of them, it is a drug that simply loses its potency (like most of the meds since there are very few of them who are toxic after the expiration and generally, docs are warning about them). I know for sure that albuterol inhaler or nebulizer with albuterol it is not dangerous because all of my 3 daughters are using either one of them. plus me. my wife is the only one who’s not using albuterol in this family. But we are a big family, having this said – we are having a lot of them on hand and it does happen when they are getting expired so I am not throwing them right away but I use them and they are still fine. though I haven’t used expired albuterol half a year ago. only a few days/weeks ago.
I remember that the first time I have done it – by accident. I have not noticed that I gave one expired albuterol to one of my daughter as a treatment and of course I have got scared so I have called our doctor immediately asking him what I need to do now. anyway, his answer calmed me down as he told me that there is nothing really to be worried about since medications, sometimes are getting weaker after they are expired for a long time (but he didn’t mentioned what a “long time” exactly is). but I assume that it must be a few months because they are not expiring the exact same day written on the bottle. Companies just guarantee that their product would save 100% of their potency if stored properly and used until the expiration date. But if the product is stored properly I am pretty sure that it still has 100% of the potency even few days after the expiration date. There are friends of mine claiming that they used aspirin and ibuprofen more than half a year after their exp. date and they worked exactly the same as they should work. I doubt that albuterol would work after so much time after the exp. date but still – sure won’t stop working the same day as I know it from personal experience.
Anyway, about the albuterol itself, since we are having so much of it on hand, I am trying to keep track of when everything is expiring so it won’t happen, however if I do find a dose or maybe 2 that it is expired a few days ago, I am still using it myself and I have never had a problem with that. everything I’m trying to say is that you (or your gf) need to use the one that expired not so long ago and see how it works – if it’s good to go, then it’s fine