Life's little puzzles: the period-after-opening symbol

[pne]

So there's this little symbol on things such as tubes of toothpaste, which looks like a little open tin with a number such as "24 M" inside or beside it.

I had always wondered what that was for; my guess so far was that it you squeezed it out, you'd get 24 metres out of it... though why they'd put that measure on it, I have no idea. After all, they already supply the quantity by weight...

Now, by the magic of Wikipedia (German version), I know now that it's the "period-after-opening symbol", used on cosmetics with a shelf life of at least 30 months to indicate "the period of time after opening for which the product can be used without any harm to the consumer". (Different from best-before-end dates since those count from the manufacturing date rather than the date of opening.)

So now I know.

I found it clever that the "M" in that symbol stands for "month" in just about every European language, though, including ones that use the Cyrillic or Greek alphabet.

Comments

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

Hah you've given me visions of some really anal old man squeezing out the toothpaste in one long wriggly stripe in his garage and then complaining to the manufacturer that it's not exactly 24m long ..

[pne.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Has it been around long in Europe? It was just introduced here within the last year or so. I knew what it was instantly because I never wear enough of most kinds of makeup to use it up before the date you're supposed to get rid of it, so I constantly have to look it up. So when something I knew was supposed to replace every 6 months had that little picture with "6 M" on it ...

[pne.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'm really not sure when I first saw it.

[conuly]

Well, there has to be some wiggle room, right? I mean, what happens after two years, does it self-destruct?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Two years after opening is how long you can expect to use it "without any harm to the consumer".

After that, it's quite possible that it's still fine, but you can't have the expectation any more.

Just like sell-by and use-by dates on, say, yoghurt; the milk inside might spoil quickly, or it might keep for a week or more after the use-by date.

It just means that there's no more guarantee after that point; what happens afterwards and exactly when can be random.