When Colorado and other states began to legalize marijuana over ten years ago, they were faced with a problem: how to guarantee a safe product, with little long -term risks of pesticides and other contaminants.
“” SAFE “is a funny word”, both because what is harmful to a person may not be for another, and because people vary in their risk tolerance, said Jeff Raber, CEO of the marijuana consulting company The Werc Shop and instructor of the cannabis program of the University of Denver.
The same amount of chemicals in a batch of cannabis could be benign or harmful, depending on the size of the person who uses it, how often they smoke and how much they take at the same time, among other factors, he said.
Colorado obliges producers to test their harvest for yeast, mold, aspergillus (a type of fungus), E. coli and certain other bacteria, pesticides and heavy metals, such as lead. Manufacturers must also test residual solvents and chemicals used to create their products.
The regulators had to work with existing limited information on the possible risks of pesticides and contaminants in marijuana, because little, if not, studies have examined which levels could be safe in a smoking or steam product, said Raber. Tobacco rules are not a particularly useful departure place because producers use different pesticides, he said.
“With edible products, we can at least resume food security standards,” he said.
A 2013 study that Raber a co-author revealed that large quantities of pesticides could pass through water pipes or glass pipes to the user. The filtration reduced the amount that the user could have inhaled, although some residues are always obtained. The study predates the current limits of states pesticides, however, so the risk for people now using regulated cannabis could be lower, said Raber.
Colorado has based its pesticide regulations updated in 2023 on the rules in place in Canada, after a group of researchers and stakeholders considered various sets of standards used in other places with legal marijuana.
The Colorado Marijuana application division has returned questions about the standards used for various contaminants to the Ministry of Health and the Environment of Colorado, which said that it could not comment.
Ideally, more studies would regulate risky chemicals in smoky marijuana and if cannabinoids compensate for part of this risk, but most research is still trying to settle how the plant itself affects people who use it, said Raber. And, of course, federal law limits the ability of researchers to develop and study cannabis, although Colorado scientists have ongoing projects on pesticide residues and contamination by heavy metals.
The absence of direct data is important because everything that is present on the bud is not part of the user’s body, said Mark Lefsrud, an associate professor who studies medical cannabis at McGill University in Canada.
For example, contamination by heavy metals would cause a problem in a concentrated or edible product, but lead and cadmium do not turn into particles that users can easily inhale during smoking, he said.
“As a recreational consumer, I would say that it is very low” that heavy metals in a smoked product would be dangerous, said Lefsrud.
The same goes for E. Coli, who is not just well during the fire, said Lefsrud. Epidemics E. coli are periodically ill and sometimes kill consumers – more recently, when contaminated onions have appeared in the burgers of the quarter of McDonald’s – but the state of Colorado has not had a recall of marijuana attributed to bacteria for at least 2020. (Two of the 61 reminders during these years mentioned by microbial contamination, bacteria or fungi.)
The biggest risk for an average marijuana consumer comes from mushrooms, said Lefsrud. People with pulmonary diseases or compromise immune systems may become seriously sick or die by inhaling mold spores, but even generally healthy people are at risk of toxins that aspergillus and other types of mold generate.
Colorado allows producers to kill excess mushrooms on their product, but this process does not destroy any toxin that the mold has already produced. It is not because a bud looks like and feels normal that he could not contain toxins, said Lefsrud.
“In most cases, it is the things you do not see” that are dangerous, “he said.
The state requires tests if a batch fails mold tests and the producer wishes to resolve it for use in products such as concentrates, according to the marijuana application division. The division has made no recalls or measures against marijuana companies on products that failed toxin tests.
States differ in the type of contaminants they regulate and the limits they set, but overall, they made an error on the side of prudence, said Raber. In the end, they had to make judgments according to imperfect evidence, such as American and European food regulators who have arrived at different conclusions to find out if some dyes are ok to eat, he said.
“It is an evolving image, but it evolves to improve,” he said.
States are relatively well placed to catch if a lot makes consumers sick in the short term, said Raber. The effects of long-term use will be difficult or impossible to settle, because most people use several products, and other differences between groups of people make it difficult to determine the quantity to be attributed to cannabis, even less to the pesticides used, he said.
Raber works in the cannabis industry and is not interested in telling adults not to smoke, but said that people should understand the uncertainties around security.
Consumers can somewhat reduce their risk by changing the products they use – so that they do not systematically expose a contaminant who happens to be raised on a type of marijuana – and not doing too much to use, he said.
“I think that is the best you can do today,” he said.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
