Previously, in almost every house in a medicine cabinet, glass vials were filled with small black crystals - potassium permanganate, colloquially - potassium permanganate. This salt is known in pharmacology for its antiseptic properties, as well as its ability to disinfect many poisons and purify water.
The range of application of potassium permanganate at home has always been quite wide. She treated wounds, healed ulcers, washed her stomach in case of poisoning, and, using a weak solution, purified water for drinking. And then suddenly in pharmacies stopped selling this useful drug. As it turned out, potassium permanganate has been banned by the government of the Russian Federation since 2007. This year Ukraine followed the example of a neighbor.
Why banned potassium permanganate? More precisely, it was not banned, but severely limited the sale in pharmacies - now potassium permanganate can only be bought at state-owned pharmacological enterprises and only with a doctor’s prescription. It turned out that there are several reasons for this, and they lie in the properties of the substance.
The first reason why potassium permanganate was banned was its explosive ability. This potassium salt has a specific property: when heated and even at room temperature, being a strong oxidizing agent, it reacts to the action of such reducing agents as sucrose, tannin, glycerin, and the reaction is also observed when interacting with powders of active metals - calcium, magnesium, aluminum. With such chemical reactions, self-heating and self-ignition of a substance occurs (up to an explosion). That is why the sale of potassium permanganate was banned. The reason for this is the fight against terrorist activities. That is, potassium permanganate, familiar from childhood, is one of the substances used in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices.
In Ukraine, a ban on the sale of this substance was introduced in the summer of 2013. Why was potassium permanganate banned in this country? She was classified as a precursor - that is, substances used in the artisanal manufacture of drugs. It turns out that
potassium permanganate is one of the components for the manufacture of methamphetamine called "pervitin", or "screw". The composition of this drug also includes iodine, ephedrine, red phosphorus. However, it was potassium permanganate that was persecuted. In Russia, this reason was also one of the leading ones when making the described substance in the list of drugs prohibited for sale.
At the moment, in the Russian Federation, the ban on the sale of potassium permanganate is gradually weakening. When reviewing the list of prohibited substances, it was partially allowed for sale, but in an amount of not more than 3 milligrams. Experts in the field of pharmacology consider this decision to be correct. But why was potassium permanganate banned? The reasons mentioned above are not eliminated at the moment, and in itself such a substance as potassium permanganate is already outdated. He is being replaced by new generations of antiseptics that are not involved in illegal manipulations.