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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 recreational market’s development of everything from oils for vaping to edible candy.

The key to all products, however, is the extraction stage. Use of advanced chemical techniques 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 similar to vape oils, oral tinctures, crumbles, and wax concentrates.

The three most used extraction strategies by the cannabis business 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, hot, or at room temperature. It stays one of the crucial efficient extraction methods. Nonetheless, the new ethanol usually extracts unwanted chlorophyll and plant waxes and requires clarification or correction steps. The cold process reduces these contaminants at the price 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 therefore higher for vape oils or oral tinctures. Nonetheless, like the alcohol methodology, scaling as much as giant batches is difficult and presents significant safety hazards.

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

Safety considerations

Following the discussion above, it is clear that two of the three foremost extraction strategies contain use of extraordinarily flammable solvents. The third entails the use of a cryogen with its own specific safety concerns. Therefore, cannabis extraction, particularly at production scale, entails some significant safety issues.

First, establish all hazards. This begins by building a chemical inventory or list of chemical compounds with associated necessary information corresponding to material owner, date acquired, quantity on hand, storage location, and accompanying safety data sheet (SDS).

SDSs are the second critical component and contain 16 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 contains all of the information wanted to develop your HCP and is critical if an publicity or incident occurs. Guarantee access to the SDS is available within a couple of minutes at all times (e.g. 24/7).

Train staff

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

In addition to the hazards, workers ought to obtain training on the potential publicity routes, signs, and symptoms of exposure and chemical warning properties (or lack thereof). Training should also include any personal protective equipment crucial for using 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 receive training prior to beginning any work with hazardous chemicals. Annual refresher training is highly recommended. Conduct an intensive evaluation and re-training after any shut-call or incident.

Evaluate exposures

Industrial hygienists are trained to anticipate, recognize, consider, and control all potential health and safety hazards within the workplace. Knowing that many chemical solvents pose significant risk for exposure and health penalties, we should admit that publicity assessments are necessary.

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