Detection of Adulterants In Morphine Sulfate Solutions Using UV/Vis NanoPhotometer® Instrumentation

This application note describes the development of a simple, fast and reliable method to detect adulteration of morphine sulfate solution in response to a growing problem of theft and tampering of morphine among California’s Emergency Medical Services. The method used the Implen NanoPhotometer^® instrument to detect tampering based on either qualitative (diphenylamine) or quantitative (saline, nanopure water, and epinephrine) differences in the solutions UV spectra. The method was shown to provide an affordable, sensitive, reliable and portable screening test for detecting morphine adulteration.