The Flint Water Crisis is Affecting Cannabis Growth in Michigan
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap radius”]I[/dropcap]n case you haven’t noticed, Flint’s been making headlines for all of the wrong reasons these past few months. It all started when, in April 2014, Governor Rick Snyder decided to take Flint off of Detroit’s clean water supply and connect it to the Flint River instead. As you can guess, it was a bottom-line issue. Unfortunately, instead of saving money, the switch caused irreversible damage to the pipes, causing lead to contaminate the water and poisoned the entire town. Even though they’ve since switched back to Detroit’s clean water supply, the pipes are still damaged. After trying to be covered up, people on social media and other activists were able to bring the issue to national attention and almost a year later, in January, Flint was declared to be in a state of emergency.
What we and our readers want to know, however, is what does this mean for the medical cannabis coming out of the Flint area? Is it safe? How do we know? Has it been tested? Can it be tested? Fortunately, we were able to reach out to PSI Labs and Iron Laboratories for their expert feedback.
Claire T. Moore, plant expert at Iron Laboratories, provided us with some valid scientific feedback. While she admits, after thorough research, that, “Some authors suggest that land contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and lead should not be used for agricultural production . . . ,” she says. “This suggests that if the cannabis plant is exposed to lead, under the right conditions, there may be significant accumulation of lead in various parts of the plant, particularly the leaves, followed by stem tissue and seeds. With this in mind and given medicinal value of cannabis, it seems that we should be careful in using cannabis that has been grown with lead contaminated water until there is more research available.”
If that scares you, just think about all of the families that were forced to bathe in this water.
Moore gives us some hope, however, that “some research has been done with cannabis sativa as a candidate species for phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is essentially the use of plants to clean up contaminated ecosystems by pulling heavy metals out of the soil and storing them in various plant tissues so that the plant itself can be harvested and used for another purpose. As a result, the ecosystem experiences an overall reduction in heavy metal concentration. Cannabis happens to be a very promising candidate species used for phytoremediation. This is just another positive use for cannabis as a species, but without further information regarding the effects of lead contaminated Cannabis use on humans, it is impossible to discern what sort of effects it may have.”
When speaking with Lev Spivak-Birndorf, PHD, Chief Science Officer & Co-Founder of PSI Labs, he was able to go a little more in depth to how this issue is directly affecting the area and what we can do about it. Pay attention, growers!
“Most cannabis growers are very aware of their water chemistry and the effects that has on keeping their plants healthy. It’s pretty likely that a lot of them are using clean sources of water like those treated with reverse osmosis (RO) systems to remove contaminants and purify the water . . . Extraction of cannabinoids with hydrocarbons as is typically done might actually be a way to clean up contamination from heavy metals in cannabis flowers. This is because the solubility of inorganic heavy metals in organic solvents like butane and ethanol is substantially lower than the solubility of metals in inorganic solvents like nitric and hydrochloric acid. Therefore, during extraction, you could leave metals behind in the plant residue as you extract cannabinoids and terpenes into oil,” he says. “However, there are no data to test this so it is just an idea. Similarly, when preparing edibles it’s unlikely that many metals would end up in the extraction butter/oil. Unless actual plant material is being eaten and exposed to the acidic environment in the digestive system then it is unlikely a lot of metals would be introduced into the body this way.”
Dr. Spivak-Birndorf leaves us with a very thoughtful conclusion and reminds us that there is always a way to make sure our medicine is safe. If you have any uncertainties, you can always question your sources and ask for details on how your medicine came to be. “While there is some data and caution should be taken until more studies really answer some of these questions, the data that are currently available suggest that overall the issue of contaminated water in Flint should have a relatively minimal impact, if any, on the health and safety of medical cannabis users in the area. It’s important to consider all of the available data and facts when evaluating a complex scenario like this and to not let irrational fears drive the decision making.”
