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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 centered 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-art methods have led to new forms of cannabis extracts reminiscent of vape oils, oral tinctures, crumbles, and wax concentrates.

The three most used extraction strategies 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 every of these methods.

Alcohol extraction uses ethanol and may be performed cold, sizzling, or at room temperature. It stays one of the vital environment friendly extraction methods. However, the hot ethanol typically extracts unwanted chlorophyll and plant waxes and requires clarification or correction steps. The cold process reduces these contaminants on the worth of longer extraction times. Room temperature ethanol extraction splits these differences.

Hydrocarbon extraction makes use of butane or propane, solvents with much lower boiling factors than ethanol. These solvents extract more of the plant terpenes, which provide more flavor and aroma and are subsequently higher for vape oils or oral tinctures. Nonetheless, like the alcohol technique, scaling up to large batches is difficult and presents significant safety hazards.

CO2 extraction necessitates costly, high tech specialized pressure and temperature control equipment to handle turning gaseous CO2 into a supercritical fluid or cryogen. The liquid CO2, with careful control, simply extracts oils and waxes and in some uses requires little to no put up-processing. The CO2 extraction process is highly tunable, allowing totally different pressures and temperatures to extract distinctive botanical compounds.

Safety considerations

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

First, identify all hazards. This begins by building a chemical inventory or list of chemicals with related important information corresponding to material owner, date acquired, amount on hand, storage location, and accompanying safety data sheet (SDS).

SDSs are the second critical component and contain sixteen specific sections detailing information on the chemical’s constituents, physical properties, health hazards, first aid measures, personal protective equipment, and particular handling and disposal requirements.2 The SDS comprises all the information wanted to develop your HCP and is critical if an publicity or incident occurs. Ensure access to the SDS is available within a few minutes always (e.g. 24/7).

Train employees

After figuring out 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 each chemical).

In addition to the hazards, employees should obtain training on the potential publicity routes, signs, and signs of publicity and chemical warning properties (or lack thereof). Training also needs to embody any personal protective equipment mandatory for using the chemical as well as incident response, mitigation steps, and first aid measures.

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

Consider exposures

Industrial hygienists are trained to anticipate, acknowledge, consider, and management all potential health and safety hazards within 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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