As cannabis legalization becomes more legal and subsequently cultivated and sold in large amounts, this means that the agricultural practices and strategies to grow the most quality cannabis will also have to become more large-scale simultaneously. With grow rooms featuring hundreds of plants, the cultivation methods and ways that growers must use to grow the highest yield are both very complex and heavily regulated. The pesticides and other chemicals used to strengthen the plants, soil and keep bugs and other contaminants away from the plants are monitored meticulously by the cultivators as well as state regulators.
Several pesticides and other types of agricultural chemicals are banned in various degrees across the legal states. In California for instance, the chemicals and pesticides banned in cannabis usage are explicitly stated and compared.
“If a pesticide product does not have directions for use on a food crop, it cannot be used in
cannabis cultivation.” the announcement by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation said. 16 different chemicals, from carbofuran to methyl parathion are banned entirely while nine other chemicals are allowed to be used only under a very restrictive amount. On the document by CDPR, the regulators also listed 19 other chemicals and pesticides that are capable of seeping into groundwater and the surrounding soil.
This issue of banned pesticides seeping into the soil has become a decently widespread issue that is impacting cannabis farms in a specific region of north central Washington. Formerly a region that prominently housed fruit orchards before the cannabis industry in Washington became the sprawling industry that it is today, those orchards used such staggering amounts of the cancer-causing pesticide known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) that the remnants have been almost permanently seeped into the soil.
As a testament to how dangerous and toxic this particular insecticide is, the United States government banned the substance in the far off yesteryear of 1972. By 1991, over 26 countries from Cuba to Singapore totally banned the use of the carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemical. While it’s an incredibly dangerous chemical by all medical standards, it didn’t stop orchards in north-central Washington state from using the chemical in droves until the 1972 ban. Because this insecticide is so powerful and toxic when it seeps into the soil under the crops, the half-life period, or the period that the chemicals are essentially still active to an extent, can be decades and possibly even centuries if the chemical was used aquatically.
For chemical evidence of how dangerous and long-lasting this incesticide is even decades after its final usage in a region, the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board recently had to issue a cease of operations and/or administrative holds for multiple outdoor cultivation facilities due to high levels of DDT’s remnant chemical DDE being found in soil samples collected from seven different testing locations. Collected from a five-mile area along the Okanogan River near the town of Brewster that was once used commonly by those DDT-infested orchards, the samples were shown to have obscenely high levels of the chemical banned during the same year that the Watergate burglary occurred.
In total, 16 different cannabis producer licenses were impacted by the decision from the Washington LCB that was admittedly necessary. It’s unfortunate that dozens of Washington cannabis employees are out of work indefinitely, but it’s a measure that even the most anti-excessive regulation of employees could understand the necessity of given how harmful DDT and its derivative chemicals are.
While the LCB ordering certain cultivators to cease operations due to the detection of high levels of banned pesticides entirely isn’t unheard of by any means, this is the first time that the LCB has had to issue a cease of operations due to the “legacy use” of a banned substance. This means that although the license holders and cultivators likely weren’t using DDT directly on their crops, the detectable levels in the soil they grew those crops in were high enough to be prohibited. This new measure is particularly unique as instead of impacting only a few specific cultivators, the ruling impacts an entire geographical region of the state.
This revelation is concerning and will result in LCB having to work significant overtime in figuring out exactly what retailers and processors could possibly be in possession of any of the dozens of brands of tainted products that came from this agricultural area of the state. As the majority of the cultivation facilities were sold wholesale to processors across the state, the issue of DDT contamination could be widespread.
One of the affected cultivators who marketed their products as “pesticide-free”, Walden Cannabis had cannabis plants that absorbed the harmful chemicals still infecting the soil. Yet, the cultivator’s CEO Anders Taylor mentioned not receiving any sort of test result from the LCB regarding those contaminated soil samples.
This incident will likely set a precedent into how cannabis regulators handle banned pesticides and insecticides that have exponentially long half-life in the soil they were once used in. Especially as more conservative-leaning states that have historically had strong agricultural industries legalize cannabis, it’ll be interesting to witness exactly how these states handle this once unconsidered issue.
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