Spectrophotometric, differential pulse polarographic and differential pulse voltammetric monitoring of the chemical destruction of the anti-tumour pharmaceuticals 6-mercaptopurine, 6-thioguanine and melphalane

A new method has been developed for the destruction of 6-mercaptopurine, 6-thioguanine and melphalane in laboratory waste, based on oxidation of these substances by potassium permanganate in sulphuric acid medium. To study the effectiveness of the decontamination, spectrophotometric and differential-pulse polarographic methods have been developed for the determination of 6-mercaptopurine and 6-thioguanine and spectrophotometric and differential-pulse voltammetric methods for melphalane. These techniques have been employed to demonstrate that the effectiveness of the proposed method is around 99.8%. Its usefulness for the destruction of various types of expired pharmaceuticals has been demonstrated.