Development and validation of a general non-digestive method for the determination of palladium in bulk pharmaceutical chemicals and their synthetic intermediates by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy

A simple, selective, sensitive, accurate and relatively inexpensive method for the determination of palladium in bulk pharmaceutical chemicals (BPC) and their synthetic intermediates by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy has been developed and validated. Sample preparation by direct dissolution of sample in 70% nitric acid is simple and effective without adverse effects. The limit of detection and the limit of quantitation of the method were determined to be 0.7 ppm and 2 ppm respectively in BPC.