Periodic acid and its salts have been widely used for the quantitative oxidation of vic-diol containing compounds including carbohydrates and catecholamine drugs. The advantage of using a polymeric resin (periodate form) over free periodate ions is that the resin quantitatively retains both unconsumed periodate ions and the iodate ions produced in the oxidation and, hence, enables one to undertake further studies on the structural, synthetic or preparative work. The resin (periodate form) was found to be a clean and sensitive chromogenic reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of some catecholamine drugs. The calibration graphs of absorption versus concentration in the range studied (5–50 ppm) were linear.