Recent testing has uncovered alarming levels of dangerous molds – which can sicken or kill – in cannabis products, an investigation revealed.
The analysis, which looked at more than two million mold-testing results from nine states, suggests that contaminated samples are being cleared for sale and that the monitoring system currently in use is inadequate.
As marijuana sales have surged in states where the drug has been legalized, the darker side of the industry is beginning to surface.
Because marijuana’s humid growing conditions make the plant susceptible to developing potentially life-threatening molds, states where the drug is legal require testing for the hazardous contaminants.
Yet, due to unreliable monitoring, laboratories in many states appear to be underreporting concentrations of contaminants and allegedly selling the tainted product anyway, according to the Wall Street Journal, which conducted the investigation.
Little research on the cultivation of marijuana has been conducted which also means that growers are without an accurate model to determine the ‘safe’ limit on mold content.
The existing regulation, set at just 10,000 ‘colony forming units’ per gram, was modeled using other crops.
‘Growers, labs and regulators appear to be exposing people who use legal marijuana to dangerous contaminants,’ Tess Eidem, senior research associate in the Environmental Engineering Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told the Wall Street Journal.
‘There’s no way to know what’s going on when you get a system that doesn’t play by the rules,’ Eidem added.
‘We’re conducting a big experiment without enough knowledge,’ David Miller, a professor who studies fungal toxins at Carleton University in Canada said.
‘Discrepancies between what companies report on packaging and the content of those products are an example of inaccuracy and fraud in the cannabis-testing market,’ the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said in a September report.
Molds including Aspergillus and Fusarium have been linked the cannabis plant, as well as the toxins they produce. When ingested such fungi can pose serious health risks, especially for those with weakened immune systems.
Marijuana users are nearly four times as likely as non-users to be infected with fungi as the potentially toxic molds have been known to cause infections, dangerous immune responses and even death.