Tuesday, September 11, 2018

5 Best Practices for Cannabis Extraction Laboratory Safety







5 Best Practices for Cannabis Extraction Laboratory Safety

Supplement - Extraction Essentials

From employee protection to adhering to widely recognized manufacturing standards, follow these tips to ensure a safe working environment for your employees and your business.
August 27, 2018

Markus Roggen, Ph.D., VP, Extraction, Outco
 
Cannabis extraction has a dark history of burned-down apartment buildings, exploded cabins, toxic byproducts in extracts, and oils of questionable quality. With a maturing industry that is stepping out of the shadows and into regulatory oversight, many of those dangers will be mitigated through rules and regulations, but a large burden still lies with the extraction operator. 

Operators have reduced the risk of commercial cannabis extractors burning down due to compliance and the use of proven extraction practices, but that doesn’t mean one can be lackadaisical. Ignoring extraction safety can lead to the laboratory literally exploding, making you legally liable for staff injuries and potentially dooming your professional cannabis career. 

Here are five tips to help ensure that no security measure is forgotten.

1. Protect Staff

With the focus on producing great extracts, it is often overlooked that the most important aspect of laboratory safety is workers’ safety. For the cannabis industry, specific hazards to consider are the extraction solvent and cannabis material. 

The explosion of butane laboratories is well publicized, and closed-loop BHO extractors mitigate the risk. Even CO2 poses dangers, as it can displace a room’s breathable oxygen. Therefore, ensure that CO2 levels stay below 3,000 ppm. As the extraction staff works with dried milled material, protect them with particle masks, safety goggles and coveralls.

2. Protect Instruments

Extraction instruments are sophisticated machines that are the foundation of a company’s success. They need to be well maintained, both to ensure their uninterrupted use and their operational safety. Follow the manufacturer’s advice regarding cleaning and maintenance. Focus on valves, connections and seals that can wear out over time and start leaking solvent and extract. Also, the pump is your economic engine, make sure it does not slow down or break. 

While these efforts might be painstaking in the short term, keeping your machines running at optimal performance is the more profitable, and safer, approach.

3. Protect Starting Material

As the extraction process will extract and concentrate not only cannabinoids and terpenes, but also contaminants like pesticides, it is important to ensure the quality of the starting material. Conduct regular quality control (QC) checks on received material. Whenever pesticides make it into the extraction instrument, removing residues may become a monumental effort. 

Furthermore, the wrong storage condition for the starting material can lead to cannabinoid degradation, terpene loss and mold growth. Implement a just-in-time material supply to reduce storage time.

4. Protect Product

Many factors can influence extract quality. Check that your final product is within the expected parameters on cannabinoid concentration to validate the production process. Continue the regular QC checks to avoid missing any unexpected pesticide contaminations. 

It is often best to perform internal QC tests so that you know the results of the final compliant test beforehand, either by investing into your own testing instruments, or collaborating with a third-party lab for R&D samples.

5. Plan and Follow Acronyms

Workers’ and production safety are not new. There have been well-practiced standards across every other industry, and those structures can quickly be adopted to address the current needs of the fledgling cannabis field. Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans are a good starting point to ensure the safety of every aspect in production. These plans can eventually evolve to a full Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) implementation. 

Whatever protocols are adopted, make sure they are written and adhered to. Even consider hiring a dedicated QC person for your operation.


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Everyone expects Meth labs to explode regularly because the process of making Meth, while simple, is inherently vulnerable to explosion because of the chemicals involved or if, as often is the case, the operator is inexperienced, careless, inattentive or stoned or, as also often happens, the equipment is poorly made or the work location is poorly vented.

But for some reason, makers of Hash Oil appear to think that they are working with a less dangerous process, or that they have more leeway to be careless or stupid, which isn’t the case – a fact testified to by dozens of hash oil facility explosions every month, especially in states where Cannabis is now legal and so there is a surplus of waste material that practically begs to be used. Squeezing the last drop of goodness out of waste Cannabis leaf is an almost irresistible temptation, and that is completely understandable.

While making hash oil safely on a large scale is absolutely possible, given the right knowledge, equipment and procedures, in this short blog I want to address the small-scale grower/maker who is equally vulnerable to deadly explosion and fire unless they are informed and careful, but who are much more often working in a basement or garage where other people, often their own children are present.

There are safe and effective ways to extract the delightful properties of Cannabis from waste leaf left over from trimming, and the internet if full of kitchen chemists and their advice. I’m writing this blog to encourage these small-scale alchemists to think twice before just googling “How To Make Hash Oil” and then following the first advice that pops up on their screen.

Like the old coach says – there’s a right way, and a wrong way to do things. Here then is a short set of illustrations of what to watch for, illustrating the range of good-to-bad advice available on the internet.

This Recipe is Safe

https://steemit.com/cannabis/@the-stoned-ape/tutorial-how-to-make-cannabis-shatter-budder-wax-with-alcohol

This excellent article offers safe method for small-batch home extraction. It is detailed and the steps are all well-illustrated, and the results should please anyone who is willing to follow the directions.

Safe, But Confusing

http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2006/09/19/4821

Lengthy article that reviews a lot of different methods and is full of cautionary notes that should be read and clearly understood, but given the length and complexity of the piece not everybody will come away knowing exactly how to make hash oil safely.

Safe – If You Take Precautions

http://www.a1b2c3.com/Marijuana-Extracts-Make-Hash-Oil-Alcohol-501.html

This is a decent description of how to use alcohol instead of butane to make small batches of hash oil. The writer doesn’t seem to care much about the quality of the Cannabis being used, but the steps to take are well-illustrated with photos and if you follow the directions the method is safe. The key is evaporating the alcohol without an open flame and the writer’s suggestion of a rice cooker is a good one.

Downright Dangerous

http://herb.co/2016/08/24/best-medical-cannabis-oil/

Here is an example of a well-meaning writer giving advice that can cause serious injury or death. Although the article has a lot of positives – it talks about using high quality organic Cannabis and being selective about the strains you choose – your first clue to the fact that the writer may not be totally safety conscious is the first photo.

He is illustrating the point that you need to work in a well-organized, clean space and the shot is of a very nice kitchen – with a four-burner gas stove! Later on, he goes into great detail about how to use a double boiler over high heat (on the stove!) to evaporate the alcohol.

There’s only one thing to say about this – alcohol fumes ignite, and they are ignited by open flames, and they can ignite explosively. This article is an excellent example of why you have to be careful where you get your advice!but

I hope that the following suggestion isn’t too self-serving, if you want dozens of safe, effective, and diverse Cannabis extraction methods explained in clear, step-by-step fashion, I believe that my 1981 book “Marijuana Foods” is probably still one of the best around. I covered dozens of natural, non-explosive extraction methods for producing Cannabis extracts for cooking medibles, and they are all safe and effective. In fact, even with all the recipes floating around today, almost 40 years later, there’s not much that wasn’t covered pretty thoroughly in this original book – the first of its kind, incidentally. 

 Here’s the Amazon link if you want to take a look. Note: while the cover is different from the original, the contents have not been altered. Enjoy!

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