Which term means impurity resulting from adding inferior ingredients?

• A. Adulteration
• B. Tolerance
• C. Synergism
• D. Potentiation

Answer: (A)

Adulteration refers to impurity introduced by adding inferior ingredients to a drug product. This quality issue occurs when cheaper fillers, substitutes, or contaminants are mixed in, reducing potency or safety and producing a product that isn’t pure. In prehospital pharmacology, recognizing adulteration helps explain why a medication might not work as expected or could cause unexpected reactions because its active ingredient is diluted or contaminated. By contrast, tolerance is about the body’s decreasing response to repeated exposure to a drug, not about the presence of impurities. Synergism describes two drugs producing a greater combined effect than expected, while potentiation is when one substance increases the effect of another—both are pharmacodynamic interactions, not impurities from inferior ingredients.