Cannabis is fabulous It cures and offers relief to humans every single day. It is a sacred plant. And you and I defend cannabis with unwavering dedication and heartfelt commitment. And yet, the truth of the matter is is that cannabis can be abused. Cannabis can make some people sick. And those cultivating cannabis can get really sick by inhaling cannabis bio aerosols. We don't really wanna admit it because so many people condemn cannabis falsely.
I don't wanna give them an inch. And yet, we really do need to look at this new research. Because we should push for better cannabis workplace regulations to keep our friends safe who spend their days growing our beloved cannabis. If you wanna learn about cannabis health cultivation and technique, efficiently and with good cheer, I
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So go to shaping fire dot com before July 20 ninth to sign up for the newsletter and be entered into this month, and all future newsletter prize drawings. You are listening to shaping fire, and I am your host, S Lo. Welcome to episode 115. Today, my guest is doctor Test Ed. Test Items doctor research focused on developing novel antibiotics against bacterial pathogens, and her scientific career has centered on bringing modern microbiology and Rna biology practices to promote human health.
Leveraging her scientific expertise, doctor Ed transitioned into the cannabis industry where she spent 4 years working directly in cannabis production and quality management. This unique experience allowed her to combine her hands on skills and manufacturing with microbiology and product safety as a preventative controls qualified individual to help cannabis cult minimize potential hazards within their facilities and in their products.
Having witnessed firsthand the challenges of microbial contamination in the cannabis industry Doctor Ide returned to the University of Colorado Boulder where she currently works as a senior research scientist in the aero and disinfection laboratory with a focus on practical building science. Her research investigates bio aerosol persistence associated with cannabis environments, including airborne molds, all and pathogens.
She's driven to connect unbiased scientific research with environmental engineering principles and applying them to the cannabis space to improve worker well being, plant health and consumer safety. During the short first set, we will discuss the nature of bio aerosols. In the longer second set, we will discuss the threat matrix of cannabis bio aerosols, we will look at the various sources of fungal bacterial and viral bio aerosols and determine their threat levels to cannabis workers.
And we will finish the episode considering actions that cannabis folk can use to keep themselves safe and mitigation actions employers in regulators can implement to decrease bio aerosol risk. Welcome to shaping fire tests. Good to be here. So let's get right into it. What's the difference between simply smelling cannabis and enjoying those aroma mat like we all do? Versus inhaling bio aerosols that can be harmful when in volume. It's a really good question.
You know, and the the aroma that comes off of the cannabis, flower when you're breathing that in. It's a lot of the, vapor. So a lot of the gases is come off of the flower itself. So that's your volatile organic compounds, your V c's.
That'll mostly be t and ester and give the those kind of classic aroma, you know, gas diesel, you know, fruity types of aroma, while, when you're breathing in bio aerosols, it's not just the gases that are present, but there's actually small particles floating around in the air that may contain biological materials at least in part, So that could be coming from microorganisms in the environment, it can be coming coming from the plant matter itself
it can be from the substrates. It can be from humans. So there's a lot of different things that can be floating around in the cannabis environment that are actually bio aerosols. In addition to those vape that give aroma? Right on. So would would those vape that give the aroma? Would those also be a subset of bio aerosols? They're just not the bio aerosols that were concerned about or are they not actually considered bio aerosols because they don't have airborne particulate matter.
That is a great question too. So the definition of an ara aerosol is it's it's gotta have that, that physical mass. It's in a in a solid form. So it's not a gas yes phase. So those aerosols are the particulate matter while V c's are going to be in gas space. So it's kind of like for example, a difference would be, when it's really humid out, that's water in its vapor phase. That's your relative humidity. But if I were to spray you with a a spritz,
the... That little spritz is generating tiny little aerosols of water. So, like, tiny little droplets of water essentially. So that's the difference between it an aerosol and vapor. Right on. That that makes sense to me. And and it makes sense why it would potentially, injure the human body a lot more because the gas will, you know, we we we more easily gotten rid of by our human system then little chunks of stuff. That yeah easy to use the scientific terms,
chunks of stuff. Chunks and stuff. I like it. We're gonna C for the chunks and stuff. We'd love to make acronyms and in science. Yeah. I mean, V c's can be potentially hard full, especially at high levels, but it has to be pretty high and different V... You know, V seasons is like grouping in tons of different an organic compound. So some may be at higher levels tend to be more irritants intense. Mh. Or if it comes in contact with your skin.
You know, some people don't, you know, if you get, contact with, like, essential oils, most essential oils are t. And sometimes that can irritate people's skin or it can be soothing to some people. So it really just depends on a person's sen prioritization to those different compounds and the specific compounds that are part of those V. Right on understood.
So during the introduction to this show, I, you know, I pointed out for folks that you are really on the cutting edge of this science, and that the research here is is just starting. And so, of course, I'm gonna be asking you to theo some as as the expert to help give us context. But but what I wanna ask about is, you know, how are these harms theoretical?
Because as people who work in the cannabis industry, I mean, I know that when I work with the plants, when a lot of them touch my skin over the course of a day, I'll get you know, a rash or hive. So so I know my human does have a reaction to the plant, sometimes in ways that are less pleasant because those hive are a real drag. But but, you know, I've got lots of friends who work in the industry, but who don't complain about the kinds of
issues that are in the study? Are are these harms more theoretical that they could happen? Or are we already seeing them in people who work in cannabis. Yeah. We are seeing it, in, you know, the limited reports that are out there. People do have that contact, dermatitis or, you know, they develop hive. From touching plants, that's why you'll usually see people where, like, sleeves during harvest, to protect their arms from that contact. And that could be the results of a lot of different things.
It could be irritants from that plant. If could be developing allergies, which is a little less understood. And, then there's the rest
exposures, which can also be harmful. And, you know, even though there's not a lot of data out there in the cannabis space, We know based on, you know, parallels in other industries, other agricultural settings that these agricultural dust, and those environments can generate, potentially harmful, aerosols or bio aerosols that, especially over the course of time and repeated exposures Some people tend to, you know, genetics plays
a role on this too. So some folks may be more sen to some of these agents in the air. For all sorts of reasons. And so 1 of the reasons why I think it's not as investigated in the cannabis space is because the cannabis industry is really relatively pretty new, you know, here in my home state of Colorado. It's been recreational legal since 20 14. So, you know, we have, like,
10, maybe 20 years of data. We're of, like, looking at some of these bio aerosols, but most of the recent reports have been within the last couple years, and it has to do with, you know, employees having adverse events at work to something in the air in these facilities. I'm sure that to... There is a not insignificant number of people who are not...
Reporting as well. And and, you know, how can the how can those science capture the incidence is if the employer doesn't report it or if the employer doesn't report it or if there's nowhere to report it to. So in in your research, what are some of the main reasons you have found that that under reporting happens.
Yeah. I think that's a really good question, and it's it's you know, my answer will be pretty speculative, but from my experience, you know, a lot of these cannabis companies because you know, cultivating and manufacturing cannabis is still federally illegal. There's kind of this con concept that you know, federal oversight on employee health standards and employee safety don't apply to,
these cannabis companies, which is just untrue. Like, Osha, Osha regulations or the occupational safety and health administration, their standards and their regulations still apply in these cannabis operations.
And then, you know, there's just in general, there's a kind of a stigma surrounding cannabis in general, you know, from reporting it to your doctor that you use it to reporting incidents at work, especially some of, you know, unlike getting run over by a forklift or something like that or, you know, some of these maybe repeated motions that that are pretty typical of a lot of other manufacturing and cultivation environments, having adverse events like respiratory distress,
is not as well understood and, not everyone experiences is it exactly the same. So because, you know, some people may experience it other people in that exact same environment may not experience, like shortness of breath or reasoning, or other, respiratory issues. They may feel like it might be in their head or if something's wrong with them or they're they just don't wanna be associated with cannabis in in general,
at least officially. And so they may not report it to their internal safety manager if if they have 1 or to, like, you know, their state Osha or N representatives. So in the second set, we're gonna talk more about the specific threats. But generally speaking, are these bio aerosols and the impact on
on the humans who work there? Is this something that really only impacts those working in manufacturing commercial quantities of cannabis or or might these fungal spores and bacteria and plant materials be at a high enough density in a cannabis patient's, home greenhouse or in their basement, say of, like, 20 or, like, let's say 15 to 25 plants, which might be typical of of patient regardless what the losses that, you know, that's fairly typical.
You know, could these bio aerosols exist at that low of a density or does it really have to be scaled commercial growing. You know, I think that this scaling, you know, just like anything else, scaling
also your problem scales. So I would say that it's probably more likely that these you know, the diversity and the amount of bio aerosols in some of these indoor commercial operations, especially those that retrofitted buildings or maybe have proper Hvac design, and implementation, you probably are gonna see much higher levels of bio aerosols in those environments just because of the sheer number of plants and they're all, you know, trans and putting moisture in the air and the
materials in those spaces may not be suitable for the high humidity, warm temperature conditions. And so you probably are seeing it more in those can in those environments, especially in cultivation and then maybe slightly different bio aerosols on the processing side of things. And, you know, when you're grinding you know, 50 pounds of flour a day you probably are gonna be exposed to a lot more of these bio aerosols than when you're just grinding up, you know, a pound that you harvested.
You know, a couple weeks ago, and you're now trimming or grinding home. So it really does depend, and it depends on your unique home environment as well, really controlling the temperature and humidity. And then, if you do notice that you have respiratory distress when you're handling plant matter, especially dried plant matter, then I would just say at home to wear, like, a a respirator, like, an n95. You know, we're... We're all pretty familiar with these things since Covid.
But that will help to prevent being exposed to some of those potential particulate. And for goodness sakes, if you're doing this at home, we'll also at work. Use a use a hepa filter for goodness
sakes. So, you know, we've got a we've got a a patient organization here on Fashion Island where I live, and at least until Covid, prior to Covid, we would all get together every fall and and trim together, And and when you've got that many people with that many plans from different places, you know, people were people would find themselves sneezing like, I don't sneeze are on my own plants, you know? But but everybody's growing in different
ways. And so Mh. Just those just those very basic things like, like masking and gloves and a hepa filter for anybody who... Well, not only do do do you wanna use it for people who are sensitive, but it's it's really good to use that stuff even if you're not sensitive yet because so many people get become sensitive from repeat usage. Right? So so if somebody's listening to the show and they're feeling cocky, they're like, oh, there's none of this at my work environment. It's like, well,
you might not just be sensitive yet. Right? Right. Yes. You can definitely develop allergies just like with anything else in your life, you know, you may not have allergies to gluten when you're young, but as you get older, you might develop them. And that's that's true for cannabis as well. You can develop allergies against cannabis. There's also potentially different molds that could be on the product or in the environment that could exacerbate that or you could potentially be allergic to
those as well. So It's it's not very well understood, but there is evidence that that you can become sen to specific protein all from the cannabis plant itself. I wanna hit on, an answer you gave a little earlier about the the web of regulation. You know, I can imagine that the web of regulation regarding, you know, cannabis bio aerosols is a total mess since cannabis is still
legal at the federal level. You've got some of the federal agencies that are not regulating it because it's not legal, but then you've got other federal agencies like Osha that that are still encouraging, you know, employee protection at these companies. But then you've got the states who have got who who are trying to normalize, like, I'm sure that most of them are trying to regulate it at some level, creating this patchwork,
Is anything effective about this patchwork? Are we moving in the right direction or is it just going to be a mess until federal legalization?
Well, I do think that the legal status of cannabis definitely makes it more challenging to provide baseline data and just basic research to understand what's floating around in these diverse, indoor environments and maybe maybe even mixed environments like greenhouse, you know, the process of cannabis cultivation and process, you know, dry curing is pretty uniform
every grow. I go I mean, there's slight variance on how each grower does it, but the process is pretty similar, but the environments in which those are grown in are usually very different friend from. I've been to old tuna factories that are now cannabis grows. I've been to. Like, state of the art, like, built in Japan, and then shipped over, Greenhouse. I've been into all these different types of settings. For cannabis cultivation. So it's all very diverse. And so that can also change the bio
aerosols that are in those environments. And just in general, bio aerosols in indoor environments, you know, from you know, university indoor settings, like I'm at right now to home setting, home settings to other manufacturing settings. There's not that much that's, like, really understood, and there's definitely not standards that are, set by some of these, especially occupational safety
standards. So there are there are definitely standard set for different poll, you know, different gases, for formaldehyde in the air. Ozone zone in the air but for for aerosols and bio aerosols, it's not the correlation between exposure and disease is much more challenging to establish. And so a lot of these organizations just don't have standards that our regulations on the amount of bio aerosols that can be found in an indoor environment any indoor environment.
And, unfortunately, that that is compounding the challenges that we have in the cannabis space is that we just don't have many standards to protect people from high by bio aerosol loads in these built environments. Which all just makes the case for science like you're doing. Right? Yes. More data. Always more data. More data, so people course. So people can take more action. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, okay. So so let's wrap up this
first set. During the second set, which will be our by far, our biggest set today. We're gonna talk about the the threat made tricks of all these various bio aerosols and how they act independently. So make sure to come back after the break you are sending to shaping fire and my guest today is, test Eat them. And without these advertisers shaping fire would not happened. So please support them and let them know that you heard them on shaping fire.
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test Eat. So before the break, we talked mostly about the framework, what bio aerosols are and and and the real harm that's happening to folks in cannabis and the fact that there really isn't any good research on this yet. And so the this this preliminary and and, like, you know, not not preliminary, but but this original research that we're talking about today is shining a light on something that needs to be looked at much more closely long term for our friends who work in cannabis.
So tests, you know, we're during the first that we talked about bio aerosols that are created during cannabis cultivation, and and we gave a definition, but what are these bio aerosols that were that were wanna be so aware of? Yeah. So, yeah, with Covid, I think more folks are a little bit more educated on this just with the base understanding and a lot of times when we think of bio aerosols, we think of these intact micro.
So we've got intact viruses or intact back bacteria or fact, like mold spores that are floating around either, you know, from
from the... From, like, a moldy part of the environment that you're in and they're releasing those fours or it could be generated when let's say your watering or there's aerosol utilization of water that contains some of these microorganisms or, you know, in disease transmission, we talk about a lot, the air aerosols that are created when we're talking to each other, breathing normally. And so all of that can generate bio aerosols and environment. And in the cannabis space.
It's, there has been some research that's been done to kinda try to get an understanding of what's actually floating around in the air. It comes to these biological organisms. And from an industrial hygiene perspective, a lot of times, what, what people will do is they'll go into facilities, and they'll sample, you know, they'll take a certain volume of air, and they'll do a lot of counting.
So they'll count the number of molds spores and try to bin them into different groups of molds, or they'll they'll take that air sample and they'll culture it on petri dishes and be able to get a number of viable microorganisms or colony forming unit Cf, which might sound familiar to those folks who know anything about cannabis testing, See cf if you also used to en viable microbes on the cannabis flower itself. But the Cf few of microorganisms
can be in the air as well. And so you think about those intact microorganisms, those viable microorganisms And then there's also, their breakdown products,
so they're meta metabolized. They can secret into the environment, different meta metabolize they can break down over time and so these micro bits and pieces can end up being in the air, especially if it's part of these agricultural dust that may settle, but then become more airborne during, you know, normal work environment conditions and and activities in that environment.
And those microbial meta can include different types of toxins, They can include just immune act, Your immune system, over billions of years has, really developed a way to identify something that's foreign, especially if it's bacterial or fungal. It's like, that's not me, and I'm going to mount a response at that And then there's these other, different types of protein components that typically are what we call all.
And those activate a different branch of our of the immune system, and that's where we get, you know, the stereotypical allergies from, you know, when there's a lot of poll in the air, or if you're allergic to cats or dogs and you go into somebody's house and they have caps, you're gonna be breathing in, sort of, you know, the protein all from those cats and dogs, and those can also be present, not necessarily cats and dogs that I have seen a dog and a grow before.
Yeah. That is... I've definitely seen that. Yeah. Yeah But, you know, from any molds that are in that environment, they can definitely produce lots of different types of all, and the cannabis plant itself can also produce different all. So those are kind of the you know, it spreads the entire, spectrum from these intact organisms, some of which may be harmful and pathogenic. And then all the way down to down products or bits and pieces or meta that can also be harmful in different ways.
So I wanted shine our light for a moment on on the measurement standard Cf. Because, you know, when you were originally answering the question, you were talking about, intact fungal spores and such. And I was thinking about intact. What does she mean about intact?
And I'm like, oh, it it probably relates to Cf which which I didn't really mean... I didn't really rocket it very well until I read your paper because I think there was something about the the new fear about it, because when I'm talking when I'm when I'm talking with folks about cannabis testing and I talk about Cf you. It doesn't it doesn't really seem like a threat. But when I read your paper and I read about Cf. And for those of you who don't know, it's colony forming units.
Now it's totally sounds like alien invasion. And and and I'm like, wow, Like, in in the cultivation space, there are these you know, these these these fungal spores and different biology that are floating around and they are alive, and they could form colonies and I'm breathing them in, and that seems super creepy to me.
And I I think that it really kinda shines a light on our conversation in a different way, which which I think that could people could make this conversation kind of like, intellectual and get really into just the data and not realize that really we're talking about, like like, 1 variety of living biology, coming in contact with another variety of living biology being us. And Right and, like, how are these 2 biology gonna interact? Are they, you know, is
our immune system just gonna squash them? Or are they gonna, like, ruin our whole week or or longer by by, you know, forming these colonies. Right? That we... That we refer to in the standard? And so I I just add that to to to make these microbiology sized living organisms seem more real because as soon as you start talking about Cf, it really gives them a lot more in of aggressive personality. Yeah. Because they're alive, you know, because when you look at,
a comparison. So if you... If I were to take a set volume of air, and look at that error that I collected either on a filter or there's lots of different ways to collect bio biological, particulate from the air that will, you know, preserve it. Sometimes that infection can kill micro So you got... Your collection method is really important when you're trying to evaluate certain especially viable microorganisms in the air.
And And when you're pulling that out of there, if I were to look at mold spores, for example. I could count the number of mold spores, but not all those mold spores are actually gonna turn into a viable colony forming unit kind of like how when you're growing plants, not all your seeds Germ. So, it's really actually a pretty low amount. It's about 1 percent. Of mold spores will actually, like, sp into a viable colony forming unit.
And so you get a slightly different answer, but those mold spores could still potentially be harmful even though they're not alive because of these other microbial meta tablets that could be on those fours are associated with them, like all. And then even if they are alive, they may not really be harmful to most people if they're not pathogens, meaning they don't really cause disease. They don't have the capability to to really infect a human.
They may not they may be a pathogen, but maybe they're not very good at being transmitted through the route of inhalation. So some microorganisms are are better at you know, being breathe in and and being transferred from 1 person to another, like many viruses are are transferred that way. You know, legion air disease, that's bacterium that can be transferred in the air and and spread disease, usually from water. And then there's there... So some some just weren't really good at being
transmitted by disease through the air. But those that are could potentially be harmful, especially to a subset of people who may have a compromised immune system. You know, you do have an immune system, a resident immune system in your lung. I'm not an epidemiologist, but my coa author Tara Nor. Who who helped me with the paper she is. She actually studies lung immunology, especially in response to agricultural dust.
And so these these viable pathogens could potentially be harmful to those folks who are immune compromised, and that's where you may see like, you know, in particular, ask asp jealous fu goddess, it's a world held organization, critical priority fungal pathogen, it could potentially, if it's in the air, which it's very common in the air in many different environments, if you are a particularly sensitive person or have a, compromised immune system, there could be a chance that exposure could
result in some type of asp gill related disease, which can come in a variety of different flavors from asp, which is that active fungal infection of to different hyper sensitivities to asp gill. And again, that has to do with exposure to those all. When we get to that part of the study where lists, all of the Latin names of all of the things that could go wrong with you. It it does seem like a threat. You know? I'm I'm like, are
you threatening me? You know? It's like, these are on none of these things are things that I wanna get from my plants. And I think that for most people when they're when they when they're... When they they say, oh, there's there can be things in the air at the in the grow. Most people are just assuming that these are things that are drifting off of the plant. Right? But it it was really remarkable to me to read all of the different sources that you identify in the paper. 1234567.
Like, like, there's at least 8 or 9 of them. We don't have to go through them all. But would you review, you know, a handful them for us because what I'm hoping to get out of this question is people to have a a better understanding of all the different places that bio aerosols that could threaten them start.
Yeah. Absolutely. So in that paper, there's a a figure that just kinda shows the the general process of cultivation dry cure and the manufacturing processing side and and at each point in the process, there's likely different bio aerosols being generated from different sources, and that can include the substrate that you're working with, like Coco Core or even raw wall could potentially generate different bio aerosols, the the your irrigation irrigation system, the Hvac system,
even moldy walls or, you know, standing water could potentially result in some of these bio aerosols if you're using benefit official microorganisms or any even beneficial, like, predatory mites or other insects you know, insect allergies are pretty common and people who work. There's actually been documentation of developing allergies towards some of these insects and ara that are used in these cultivation facilities.
And then along the entire process, you know, when you transition over from cultivation into dry care and and really, particularly in manufacturing, much of the bio aerosol that's going to be generated are likely gonna be from the plant matter itself. So especially in those handling and trimming and grinding of dried plant material. That's when you start seeing more and more of the bio aerosols being composed of that plant matter. So shaping fire, we tend to lean towards regenerative,
growing topics. We're not we're not very into salt growing and A plus B here. And in even outdoor and sunshine. So we tend towards that direction here. And what I'm hearing from you is that certainly while some of the the chemical contaminants or chemical issues that that we might inhale might go away. Most of everything you're talking about is biology and sounds like it would be just as a just as applicable to a regenerative minded grow as it would a full on chemical hydro grow.
Yeah. Sure. I mean, these biological components are gonna be present in lots of different you know, ways of growing and cultivating cannabis. And and I'm definitely a believer of regenerative, farming and agriculture as well as you know,
I love microbes. I I think that they definitely can help in the grow beneficial, but it's it's about kind of understanding what is in the air and monitoring that and controlling that so that, you know, you're really minimizing exposure because it's about exposure and the frequency exposure, the amount that you're exposed and your genetic predisposition that's gonna ultimately result in whether or not you, have a negative health outcome because of some of these
exposures. And many people who work in agriculture over time, especially you know, in Nebraska where I'm from originally and where a lot of this research is is being done at my Alma mater, University Nebraska Medical Center, people who work in these agricultural industries, tend on to wanna wear masks, you know, they
they don't... You, that that kind of lack engineering control that you can put in place that that mask over your face to protect you is not, you know, the kind of culture there is, I'm not gonna wear asking and that's Mh. That's fine. Except for you're being exposed to some of these deaths. You're being exposed to some of these other elements that could be in the air. And I think that that can translate over into cannabis as calls, you may be exposed, but you don't know
you know, what's really in the air. And so I think doing some basic monitoring can be really helpful so that you can kinda gauge. Well, do I really have anything to worry about or, our our levels pretty you know, relatively low from the few kind of standards that are out there, or is it more in line with, like, post hurricane building that's had flood damage, and I'm, like, I've got mold levels like, in
line with some of these remediate sites. So kind of trying to gauge that for yourself really requires you to to take a look at what's floating around. I know this is kind of AAA sidebar, but, this whole idea of wearing masks while doing agriculture is still new to me. Right. But it was really run home for me about it's been about a month ago now. I was down in Ox doing some bio remediation consulting for soil biologist, Leigh Morrison who's been on the
show a couple times. And I was down there, were we were working with this fancy new compost recipe. And, while I was staying at his house, my asthma just was like, terrible. And and and and because I was being a smart Alec, I I was blaming the local flower that I picked up at dis in Ox, and he's like, man, you're you're missing the bigger point. We're in the heart of old school, petroleum agriculture here. And I'm like, oh, I didn't think about
it. And and we jumped in the cart, and we drove around, and he just showed me, you know, you know, thousands and thousands of acres that were all overt till and and nutrition lists and micro bliss and and was all dusty and blowing in the wind. And he's, like, this is the air that you're breathing at my house, dude, and I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, you know, we're we're only, like, 3 4 blocks from these
fields, of course. And and he described all the weird things that happens in his yard because of all the things that they spray just a couple blocks away. And I started thinking to myself well when when I visit him, I should probably wear a mask. This really isn't good for for my asthma,
But then I... Then we go for AAA drive, and I see all these workers who are there working in the fields right there with all this dust blowing around and it's it's filled with traditional petroleum, you know, pesticides and chemicals, and it really drove the idea home of why people in agriculture should be wearing masks. It's man. It's... It makes me think of like, all, like, the other traditional industries where you trade your body for work like, like, coal mining. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. And, yeah. And that that was, you know, in coal mining, in black lung and things like that, that's not necessarily exposure to bio aerosols, but these tiny particles that basically, can can can physically cause damage here long. And that mounts an immune response, which then can restructure your lung, physiology, and that can lead to disease. So it's a different pathway, but you get some similar and results, you know, Copd, hyper... What's the last 1. Hyper sensitive bonus? Yes.
Yes. So there's there's a lot of different... There's a lot of different... Your lungs can be hurt in lots of different ways. It doesn't need to be biological. It can be chemical. It can be physical full. But, yeah. The... Anytime there's a lot of particulate in the air, It's it's generally a good idea to wear, like, an 90 n95 respirator, just to protect yourself from just the sheer
amount that you're breathing in. Like, your lungs can, you know, kind of clean that out for the most part, but if they're really, really fine part
pulse. And this is really the the important part when it comes to a health perspective, really fine particulate matter that's below about out 2.5 microns can go deep down into the lungs and even be directly absorbed into the bloodstream And so, yes, those can cause different pulmonary diseases over time, but it's also linked to other systemic disease that a lot of times doesn't get as
much attention. But, for example, there are several publications out showing that exposure, especially to these fine particulate matter, species can lead to neuro generated diseases. And that is less well understood. But it's it's definitely a whole body thing, You know, it's not just
your lungs. If they're really small, they can get into your blood bloodstream, travel to different parts of your body, and if it's repeated exposure over a long period of time can lead to a diverse set of path technologies. So the part of the paper that really caught my attention was the different sizes of these particulate. It's, the the the top being, say, 10 micron, and then going down to the 2.5 micron that you mentioned, the smaller they get the
more dangerous they are. And so many of us are kind of like, you know, a, you gotta cut, just throw some mud on it and let's go, you know, kind of, like, like, like, let's not necessarily respect the damage that has been done to us. It becomes way more sneaky when we're talking about inhaling things that are sub 10 micron because we don't know what's happening, and it's very likely that since we don't know that
it's happening at work. We may blame it on, you know, our house or our beds sheets or our spouses fragrance or all of these things. When it's actually happening at work. It's it's kind of like an invisible threat. Yeah. So the size of these particles is really it... It's impactful from a, a health perspective, but also from just an aerosol science perspective. So the smaller the particles are, the long they can stay floating around in the air as well. So not only
do you... Could you break them in and they go deeper into your lumps, but they're likely going to be more stained exposure hazards because they're gonna be floating around in the air for longer periods of time before gravity pulls them down and they deposit. Onto the ground or onto the walls or whatever these particles end up it's called deposition in Aerosol science. So they end up falling essentially.
And the bigger particles, usually, you know, over 10 microns, you know, they will go up in the air and fall right back down. But smaller, you know, around 10 microns and smaller, they tend to stay in the air for a minute. Or even hours depending on how small they are.
So not only from, health perspective, but also from, a building science perspective, The size of the particulate, including their composition are really important when you're trying to understand the impacts that these different particles can have on workers or on other folks in indoor environments in general.
And what's interesting is that, you know, the Epa, the environmental protection agency, Osha and and indoor air quality standards are all kind of, they look at these particles slightly different.
And so even though we're all trying to look at these particles and and assess how they could be harmful, there's different bin of size and which categories may be most harmful, depending on if you're looking at an environmental health perspective, an occupational health perspective or just an indoor air quality perspective. It's really interesting to have these 3 kind of different, but overlapping fields trying to
assess these bio aerosols. It's really troubling as a regenerative farmer who loves microbes to look at the microbes as any kind of an enemy. Right? I mean, like, we... Wear t shirts. You know, I love microbes and microbe farmer and all this. Right? We love the microbes, and we're usually spending our time, like inc bait them to create more of them to pour into the substrate to feed the soil, so the soil can feed the plant.
And, yet, your paper talks about these pathogenic microbes, and and they are a human threat in our in our environments. It's it is I mean, it's obvious duh, that it's true, But it's also troubling that that this type of biology that we are in such support of also can be threat if they are of a pathogenic variety to a human. Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm a big fan of microbes myself. I'm a microbiology. I
love fermented foods. I I definitely think that microbes, you know, they created the planet that we're on today, and I appreciate that and and love them for that, but they can also a very small subset of them can directly cause disease. And some of some microbes don't really have to be pathogens to be harmful.
Like I said, some of their just their basic components their meta can actually trigger certain immune responses even though those microorganisms wouldn't necessarily infect you just the amount and the types of meta that they present could potentially be harmful. So test your research also focuses in on microbial meta like endo. That just pound our immune system. And the the the study, research suggests that this is very common when we are grinding flower, especially for pre rolls.
And anybody who's ever been in that environment knows that, you know, when when when the Material is getting ground, it kinda just like perm the whole room. And if the doors are open, it can go outside because because unfortunately, as as much as they're supposed to have good Hvac in these places, many of them don't, especially in states that are just becoming, you know, cannibal normalizing.
So so tell us a little bit about this endo antioxidant that is carried by the flower that gets ground down in into pre rolls. So endo antioxidants actually bound on gram negative bacteria. So if you remember, your your basic micro 01:01, there's 2 different basically groups of bacteria and they're sort of organized by their cell walls and their cell membrane and how that's organized. And gram negative bacteria have something called endo or Lps lip poly.
And so flour that would have, you know, high levels of bacteria on them could potentially have a lot of endo as well. And there's really no peer reviewed research studying that. I mean, we know that gram negative bacteria can definitely be on cannabis flower, so it's likely that Lps or endo talks is on cannabis flower, and there are some white papers out there.
That have shown and identified endo talks on cannabis flower that's commercial within the state, medicinal genomics, I think, put out that white paper of last year. Showing that you can identify endo on cannabis flour that is commercially available to people.
And, even in that report that came out about that fatal, occupational asthma attack in Massachusetts of a cannabis worker, the Ocean investigators went in, and they did some air sampling, and they did find, levels were elevated during you know, grinding operations in that room. Now, that company had implemented hepa filtration. After the the, worker suffered that fatal occupational asthma attack. And so it's not clear what the levels would have been, that she would have been exposed to. But
you know, that could potentially... And it doesn't have... There's really no established osha standards for the amount of endo that, you know, someone can be exposed to, quote, unquote, safely over an 8 hour weighted period. There's no Osha standard for that. We have to go off of other countries, sort of limits to kind of gauge what is a potentially harmful level. But that level is not gonna be the
same for every individual. So it's put... It potentially harmful events could happen at at very low endo levels for folks who may be particularly sensitive to that. And so in the handful of studies that look at endo in different cannabis and hemp environments, the levels in cannabis environments and granted, this is like, you know, maybe 3 to 5 papers that have come out on this. So it's very small in scope. They're not super high in cannabis operations, but they were very high in hemp
operations. And that could be just the difference between growing indoor versus outdoor. It could be how these operations are running. It could've have just been the luck of the draw, you know, roll the dice and some will be high and some will be low. Again, the sample size is very low. So that is definitely warrant... It warrants a lot more investigation on, what kind of endo antioxidant levels are actually in the air. During... Especially during processing of these dry flower products.
I wanna end this set talking about bio aerosol synergies. Because you make this interesting point during the... On the during the paper of, that there are these, you know, these various fungal bacteria and viral bare bio bio aerosols and they all kind of impact humans in different ways. But, oh, yeah, when they get together and party in your immune system, like, that it
can cause something entirely different. So will you speak briefly to these these synergies and how when when these different aerosols work together, they they can be made all the worse. Yeah. So anyone who studies biology knows, it's usually not, like, a plus or a to b to c, you know, it's it's very
complex complex. There's usually these these very interesting relationships and feed forward and feedback pathways and interactions between different you know, biological processes that can create end results that you don't expect based on what went into it. And so, for example, some of these bio aerosols can definitely s with each other. You know, endo, can s with other toxins and exacerbate different negative health outcomes and mice.
You can see sent enhanced sen centralization. So that's that, that's that kind of classic Ig mediated, which is that all, that's that branch of the immune system that really focuses on those protein all. If you're allergic to other plants that have similar proteins to cannabis that can actually sen you, and and you can have a greater likelihood
of becoming allergic to cannabis. So a lot of the growers that I talk to, who are sen because I do know several who are we'll say that when there's a lot of poll outside, they actually, notice that their their allergies inside the grow or worse. And It's not clear why that is or what's going on there, but it's likely that there's some cross sen
standardization that's going on there. And so these bio aerosols have complex relationships, and that's why it's so important to not only just be like, okay, These are the number of particles in the air and the sizes that they are, but taking a deeper dive into, you know, what organisms are there. What meta are there, what all are there, What toxins are there. And and really understanding how the diverse, kind of, I would say bio aerosol Home because we love to add home to everything science.
Could be, leading to some of these potential effects. Now drawing that that causal relationship between exposure to, particular group of different bio aerosols and disease is very challenging. Again, because there could be a lot of different things in the air, the amount that's there and the amount that you're exposed plus your own genetic predisposition is gonna play a big role in
that. But it's known that these aerosols and just the different components of these bio aerosols can interact with each other and really exacerbate negative health outcomes. That's really great with net test. Oh, well, this isn't really really great. That's really awful, but your explanation is really great. So so Let's go ahead and take a short break and be right back with the third set. You are listening to shaping fire and my guest today is micro test item them.
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On both profiles, the emphasis is on sharing what I've learned in a way that you can replicate it in your own garden, your own hash lab or for your own can path health. So I encourage you to follow at shaping fire and at s And join our online community on Instagram. Welcome. You are listening to shaping fire and I am your host, S los. And my guest today is micro, Test Eat. So test, you know, some of these bio aerosols end up in concentrate products, which are then inhaled.
Is it primarily inhaled products like dab oil that are at risk of passing on some of these these toxins? Or do we find an ingestion risk in ethanol extracted for extract oils like Rs or or crude or something like that that's gonna be eaten. That is a great question. You know, with the way... So these bilayer aerosols are generated in these cannabis environments, but the the organisms can also be on the plant matter. Like, you said, it can also settle from the environment onto the plant matter.
And and that could carry over onto the product. And that's really interesting that you bring up concentrates because some of these like endo talks and some of these microbial meta are pretty fat soluble. So in theory, they would carry over with pretty hydrophobic molecule, like, you know, Thc and Thc and and Cbd and Cbd. During these different types of extraction processes, especially if you're using organic solvent. Now, will they end up being intact and
able to cause harm in an individual. That is not clear. And really, there's no... For some of these things, there's really no testing that's done. So, like endo and which is, again, part of those bacterial, cell membranes or there's there's other types of cell membranes from fungi that contain, beta gl cans, which can also cause harm 1 breath in. It's another, component of bio aerosols. If you have a lot of fungal contamination, will those, carry over onto,
your extracts. And that... Those are not really being studied. So for compliance testing, it's not required to look at that. And so, it's it's... There's really no R and D being performed in this area. So we don't really know. Now my could potentially carry over and concentrate, but we only really test for a handful of my toxins.
Mostly that are produced by asp and pen species, but we don't test for other types of toxins that are produced by plant pathogens, like fu, which could potentially include some pretty severe toxins, and we don't test for that, so we just don't know. It's a big black box. And so it could potentially carry over, and that's something that we're really interested in from both the concentrate and on the flour, you know, during combustion or during drier vapor evaporation of flour?
Are these you know, biological components destroyed? You're heating up to, like, 400 degrees Celsius, or, or you're vapor at, like, 1 adc c or 01:50 c And, you know, are you going to destroy those biological components? Or is it going to just aerosol them and generate new bio aerosols that now contain these potentially bio agents. We
don't know. No 1 has really done any research on that in cannabis but there is research that's that has been done on tobacco that has shown that endo antioxidant can carry over into tobacco smoke and some scientists do hypo that that endo that is now in bio aerosols generated during combustion, are that that it contributes to some of these lung diseases that we see in cannabis smokers, especially those that are more inflammatory based. Like Copd. So
it's it's not clear in cannabis. There was 1 paper that was, published in the eighties that showed the Astro drill spores could carry over in cannabis joint into the smoke. So clearly, it doesn't... And and they were viable at the very end, so they could form a colony forming unit. So it's clear that these biological components can transfer over from flower and into smoke, but we just don't know the extent of that, you know, how much of it carries
over? Is it point 0001 percent of of what's on the flower it carries over or is it a much bigger chunk than that? We just don't know, and there's really no research being done on that as far as I know. And as a academic researcher at a federally funded institution, unfortunately, even if cannabis is reschedule to schedule 3, drug. Even if I had a Dea schedule 1 or schedule 3 license, I still can't go out. And pick up commercial cannabis from my state.
So I couldn't walk down the street to 1 of the many dis and boulder, grab flower and bring it back to my federally funded lab because that is illegal. Even if I have a dea schedule license. I can only source cannabis from, a Dea registered, night producer. So... Which is not representative of the stuff that's actually being sold at retail. Exactly. And that's a big challenge. You know, for academic researchers who wanna ask
these questions. It's really hard. We can only study, you know, University of Mississippi Flower, and I think there's maybe 6 or 7 other approved vendors across the United States. And, from an from a consumer safety perspective, that is very frustrating because I wanna know what's on that flower, and I wanna know what carries over into smoke. And then on the concentrate side, we really don't know. There's some work that's done on, like, the heavy metals that can be generated.
And when pesticides are comb busted, like, how... What does that result in? There's some work on that, especially in tobacco. But on concentrates, there's really not that much that's understood. About the diverse different types of microbial meta tablets that could be in there outside of, you know, the 5 or so my toxins that are tested for it as part of regulatory measures, but there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different my.
There's endo. There's all sorts of other bits and pieces that we're not really looking at And so I think that that's an area of research that that really needs funding and and there has to be some leeway there for researchers to be able to actually study product that's out on the market that people are using. Yeah. For as popular as dab is, it is amazing that that this research hasn't been done yet. There's so many people that could potentially
be at very serious risk. And we just don't know yet. So so, Tessa, wanna end with these 2 questions. The first of the 2 is, you know, we've talked a lot about the threat. That cannabis workers are under at work.
What advice do you have for cannabis workers who do work in an indoor cannabis environment on what they should do best to protect themselves because They, you know, they they love working in cannabis, and they feel that, you know, working in cannabis is a is a meaningful role to play, but we don't want them to be putting themselves at risk to be a participant in this. So so what what action should they take?
Yeah. So I think that, you know, if a cannabis worker is noticing that they are having you know, shortness of breath, while they're working or, you know, and and I know I know probably a dozen folks who've who've had these types of rest issues when working with plan that they should definitely talk to if they have a safety officer internally, they should talk to them. They should talk to the supervisor.
And they should also, go to the doctor and and be referred to an all just and see if they have allergies to cannabis or molds, sometimes it's very challenging to get these cannabis extracts to do, like, skin break tests on, folks and in different states, it can be very challenging to to be able to determine if you do have allergies towards cannabis because of the federally illegal status, even of these cannabis extracts that are used for skin break tests.
And so I would recommend, you know, really making sure that you are bringing your concerns to your supervisors, to your safety officers, make sure that you are wearing an n n95. If you do notice you have that respiratory distress and really try to figure out what it is that could be leading to this at least go to an all just and and do some basic skin prick test to see if you, do have any sen centralization to anything that could be in that environment.
And because, yeah, I mean, there was 1 study that N conducted on these 10 workers in the state of Washington, and they followed them. They had different occupational asthma related issues. And I think it was over the course of a year or so, and this N study followed these workers and ultimately, unfortunately, all 10 workers ended up having to quit their jobs because they could well, do the
work anymore. So maybe, you could ask to be reassigned to a different job duty, especially if it's getting worse and worse, If you wanna stay in the cannabis space. But, yeah. I mean, once you develop, a sen centralization or, you know, you have these exposures. Sometimes if you develop that, It stays with you the rest of your
life. So... It really sounds like people should be wearing the fives even if they're not having a trouble yet since you're saying that it's acquired, you know, if somebody loves working in cannabis, it sounds like they should start wearing a mask even when they don't have a problem, so they don't develop a problem. Nina kid It definitely couldn't hurt. I'm a big fan of masking. It definitely couldn't hurt another thing they could do is start advocating for
basic indoor air quality monitoring. Mh. There are very low cost monitors that can... They won't tell you what's in the year, but they'll tell you how many particles of different sizes in there air. They can monitor, like, V c's.
And they also monitor temperature and humidity. So you could network those and get kind of like an internet of things going and real time monitoring up and running to evaluate, the air quality in there, but it's also good for other important parameters like temperature and humidity, which you also want to be dialed in for your grow
anyway. So that's another way that, you know, a company can start looking at their air quality and, you know, putting in additional filtration, making sure that they're really getting, you know, what's recommended as far as Air exchange rates per hour, and making sure that they're taking some of these engineering controls too. A mask is great, but it's really that last kind of line of defense. You know, there's other things that you can do in the hierarchy of controls to protect workers
in these spaces. So good air filtration, making sure you're getting your air exchange rates up there and, monitoring those environments can be really helpful so that you're avoiding these high levels, so that you don't necessarily have to wear a mask because now you're you're controlling those at a source. Excellent. I love that absolute... Short term solutions for canvas workers, and longer term solutions for managers of cannabis facilities who who
want their... Who wanna keep their employees safe while not necessarily overs spending. I love it. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. So so tess, thank you so much for joining us today here on shaping fire. You know, this is a while while this is an an easy topic for you as a scientist. I think that those of us who you know, have been in love with cannabis for years and are are so used to defending cannabis from all the haters that we we never wanna say that there's
anything bad or potentially dangerous about cannabis. And and you know, after after doing this sir. As long as I have, I I have to say, unfortunately, when, you know, cannabis can be a threat, and we have to stay aware of it even though it may also be a sacred plant to us. Also, I understand that this is a pretty This is this is an opinion here, but it also is not lost on me that the harms from cannabis come from a indoor growing where regenerative is so often outdoor growing.
And b, it's... This is all worse at scale when we all tend to love craft. And so Mh. I'm not saying that we... That that that large scale indoor can't be grown in a safe way. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that oh gosh does seem to be, a bit more
evidence for outdoor regenerative growing. So So so test, thank you so much for for sharing your experience and your insight, and and also, thank you for being willing to give us a little bit of theo, mix in with your hard data, so that, you know, here at the beginning of this kind of research, we can understand what the data might be meaning better then then than just the raw data itself. You've been a wonderful guest. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me. Fabulous.
So if you would like to be in contact with tests or if you just wanna follow along with her work as it evolves, the best place to do that is through her linkedin at test Ed, that's EIDEM. Or you can go and follow the the page for her lab at C u boulder. So that's the c boulder aero and disinfection lab. You can find more episodes of the shaping fire podcast and subscribe to the show at shaping fire dot com and wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, we'd
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