This document discusses the adulteration of crude drugs. It defines adulteration as the incorporation of impurities into genuine drugs, decreasing their quality. There are two types of adulteration: direct/intentional, where an inferior substitute is used; and indirect/unintentional, which occurs without bad intentions through faulty collection, preparation, or storage. Common adulterants include exhausted materials, inferior quality substitutes, foreign matter, and artificially manufactured replacements. Adulteration lowers the amount of active ingredients and can involve inferiority, spoilage, deterioration, admixture, or sophistication.

1. ADULTERATION OF CRUDE
DRUGS
By
Rehan Kiani
Pharm.D 2nd year

2. ADULTERATION
Adulteration means incorporation of impurities in genuine or standard drugs.
Adulteration may also be defined as mixing or substituting the original drug
material with other spurious, inferior, defective, spoiled, useless other parts of same
or different plant or harmful substances or drug which do not confirm with official
standards.
The adulterated drugs are inferior in quality, containing less amount of bioactive
molecules and more amount of foreign matter.

3. TYPES OF
ADULTERATION
There are two types of adulteration;
i. Direct or intentional adulteration
ii. Indirect or unintentional adulteration

4. DIRECT OR INTENTIONAL
ADULTERATION
It is done intentionally in which a crude drug is substituted partially or fully with
other inferior products.
The adulterants due to morphological resemblance may or may not have chemical
or therapeutic potential.
Substitution of crude drug with exhausted material is common in case of volatile
oil containing materials, where exhausted material resembles the original crude
drug but is free of essential oils.

5. a) With artificially manufactured material
 artificially manufactured drugs resemble original crude drug and are used as
substitutes.
this practice is followed for costlier drugs e.g. paraffin wax is yellow in color and
is substituted for yellow bees wax.
b) With inferior quality materials
 inferior quality drugs may or may not have same chemical or therapeutic
value as that of original drug due to morphological resemblance e.g. Belladonna
leaves are substituted with Ailanthus leaves.

6. c) With exhausted material
 it is common practice for costly drugs.
The exhausted materials are used partially or fully as substitute e.g tea leaves are
collected, dried and mixed with genuine products and send to market.
d) With foreign matter
 sometimes synthetic chemicals are used to enhance the natural character e.g.
addition of benzyl benzoate to balsam of Peru.

7. INDIRECT OR
UNINTENTIONAL ADULTERATION
It occurs without the bad intentions of the manufacturer or supplier.
Due to improper evaluation an authentic drug partially or fully devoid of active
ingredients may enter the market.
Factors such as geographical sources, growing conditions, processing, and storage
are all factors that influence the quality of drug.
a) Faulty collection
Correct part of the plant should be collected other non valuable parts should not
be collected.
The collection should be carried in proper season when the active constituents are
in maximum.

8. b) Imperfect preparation
Non removal of associated structures e.g. stems are collected with leaves, flowers,
fruits.
Non removal of undesired parts or structure e.g. cork should be removed from
ginger rhizome.
Improper drying may lead to unintentional adulteration e.g. if digitalis leaves are
dried above 65C decomposition of glycosides by enzymatic hydrolysis.

9. c) Incorrect storage
A number of drugs are spoiled due to imperfect storage or some times these destroyed by
action of enzymes, microorganisms, moisture, light, temperature etc.
When cod liver is not protected decomposition of vitamin A occurs.
When digitalis, stramonium and belladonna leaves are not stored in moisture proof
container and in a dry place, enzymatic hydrolysis takes place and decomposes the active
constituents.
I f volatile oils are not stored in well closed containers and not protected from light and
high temperature, evaporation of volatile constituents takes place.

10. DIFFERENT CONDITIONS FOR
ADULTERATION
Adulteration involves number of conditions such as inferiority, spoilage,
deterioration, admixture, sophistication.
a) Inferiority
Inferiority refers to any substandard drug or substance.
The milk offered for sale at retail, is usually required to contain not less than 3%
of butterfat. If milk containing 4% of butterfat has water added to it to reduce the
butterfat to 3% it is considered adulterated, but if the same milk has all the
butterfat separated from it in form of cream and then just enough of this cream is
restored to the milk to give required 3% of butterfat it is not considered adulterated.

11. b)Spoilage
Spoilage refers to substandard drug in which quality of article has been destroyed
by action of fungi and bacteria and is unfit for human use.
Many examples of spoilage are found in the food industry, particularly in fresh
fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and seafood.
c) Deterioration
 it refers to damage to quality or value of an article by abstraction or destruction
of valuable constituents by distillation, extraction, aging, moisture, heat fungi.

12. Coffee hat has largely lost its caffeine through over roasting.
Powdered squill that has hardened through absorption of moisture
Ergot that is moldy and rhubarb that has become wormy are examples of deterioration.
d) Admixture
Refers to the addition of one article to another by accident, ignorance or carelessness.
If admixture is done intentionally it is referred as defraud, it is sophistication.
Buchu containing a few stem or root with some adhering soil would be classed as
admixtures. If admixture exceeds established standard it legally becomes adulteration.

13. e) Sophistication
It is the addition of spurious or inferior material to any article with intent to
defraud.
The addition of wheat flour to powdered ginger, with enough capsicum to restore
or enhance the capsicum the pungency and enough curcuma to maintain the color,
would represent a typical example of sophistication.