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Cannabis is big business. More and more states are passing medical use laws and the recreation-al cannabis market will not be far behind. Medical use is especially targeted on cannabidiol (CBD) extracts while extracts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) have led the leisure market’s development of everything from oils for vaping to edible candy.

The key to all products, nonetheless, is the extraction stage. Use of advanced chemical strategies and high-tech industrial machinery has allowed cannabis producers to experiment with new approaches. These state-of-the-artwork strategies have led to new forms of cannabis extracts comparable to vape oils, oral tinctures, crumbles, and wax concentrates.

The three most used extraction methods by the cannabis trade are alcohol extraction, hydrocarbon extraction, and supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) extraction. As with most things in life, there are pros and cons for each of these methods.

Alcohol extraction uses ethanol and might be performed cold, sizzling, or at room temperature. It stays one of the most environment friendly extraction methods. Nonetheless, the new ethanol often extracts unwanted chlorophyll and plant waxes and requires clarification or correction steps. The cold process reduces these contaminants at the value of longer extraction times. Room temperature ethanol extraction splits these differences.

Hydrocarbon extraction makes use of butane or propane, solvents with much decrease boiling points than ethanol. These solvents extract more of the plant terpenes, which provide more flavor and aroma and are due to this fact better for vape oils or oral tinctures. However, like the alcohol technique, scaling up to massive batches is tough and presents significant safety hazards.

CO2 extraction necessitates costly, high tech specialised pressure and temperature management equipment to deal with turning gaseous CO2 into a supercritical fluid or cryogen. The liquid CO2, with careful control, easily extracts oils and waxes and in some makes use of requires little to no submit-processing. The CO2 extraction process is highly tunable, allowing different pressures and temperatures to extract unique botanical compounds.

Safety considerations

Following the dialogue above, it is obvious that of the three predominant extraction strategies contain use of extraordinarily flammable solvents. The third entails using a cryogen with its own specific safety concerns. Due to this fact, cannabis extraction, particularly at production scale, entails some significant safety issues.

First, establish all hazards. This begins by building a chemical stock or list of chemical substances with associated vital information comparable to material owner, date acquired, amount on hand, storage location, and accompanying safety data sheet (SDS).

SDSs are the second critical component and comprise 16 specific sections detailing information on the chemical’s constituents, physical properties, health hazards, first aid measures, personal protective equipment, and special dealing with and disposal requirements.2 The SDS contains all the information needed to develop your HCP and is critical if an exposure or incident occurs. Guarantee access to the SDS is available within a couple of minutes always (e.g. 24/7).

Train employees

After identifying hazards and building inventory of hazardous chemicals, conduct the communication part of the program. This means getting the critical information to employees (e.g. training our workers on the hazards of every chemical).

In addition to the hazards, staff should receive training on the potential publicity routes, signs, and symptoms of publicity and chemical warning properties (or lack thereof). Training should also include any personal protective equipment essential for utilizing the chemical as well as incident response, mitigation steps, and first aid measures.

Preventive and proactive health and safety is essential—this means the timing of training matters. All staff ought to obtain training prior to beginning any work with hazardous chemicals. Annual refresher training is highly recommended. Conduct a thorough overview and re-training after any shut-call or incident.

Consider exposures

Industrial hygienists are trained to anticipate, recognize, evaluate, and management all potential health and safety hazards in the workplace. Knowing that many chemical solvents pose significant risk for exposure and health consequences, we must admit that exposure assessments are necessary.

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