When your bud burns black and you get a headache, that is from left behind nutrients, but also sprays because your cannabis wasn’t flushed properly. Or because it was sprayed while flowering.
These sprays include pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides which are supposedly used to protect the plants, but most of them are cheap shortcuts used to avoid safer, more expensive practices.
For many of the approved sprays, Canada’s legal producers are actually allowed to follow a zero-day Pre-harvest interval (PHI,) meaning there is no required time between the last spray and actual harvest.
Since cannabis is sprayed well into the flowering stage up until right before the crop is finished, the zero-day PHI means that all of those nasty sprays can be trapped in the legal cannabis you’ll soon be smoking.
This is a horrendous thought when you consider the lack of study on these products when smoked.
How many are actually used? 23- but that number changes as they occasionally remove or add new ones to the list.
The most recent addition was:
Zerotol Broad-Spectrum Algaecide/Fungicide
Active ingredients:Hydrogen Peroxide and sanitizer (peroxyacetic acid)
This is highly toxic and corrosive in concentration. It is used as a cleaner for the growing facility. It is even sprayed directly on flowering plants as a defence against powdery mildew and fungus.
Cannabis is known to prevent cancer through its antioxidant effects. Hydrogen peroxide, on the other hand, directly opposes this property. Going against the grain of typical health recommendations, it promotes oxidation. When vaporized, hydrogen peroxide can carry potential health benefits, but long term exposure can lead to severe issues.
It is a dangerous chemical in cigarette smoke and a potential major contributor to cancer from tobacco.
It can be absorbed into your lungs and stomach, so it is even illegal to use this on a food crop.
In regards to how Zerotol will be regulated once edibles arrive, Health Canada media relations officer, Geoffroy Legault-Thivierge, said:
“As the amendments to the Cannabis Regulations have yet to be brought into force, whether the cannabis crop will still be considered a non-food crop is unknown.
At the moment, ZeroTol is registered for use on cannabis to suppress fungi and is not expected to pose unacceptable risks to human health and the environment when used according to label directions.”
This is a claim with incredibly concerning credibility due to a lack of trial study. To make things worse, no time between past application and harvest is required, due to the zero-day PHI mentioned earlier. When used according to the label directions, it is mostly ensured no residues or odour will be detectable by the consumer.
But there’s another reason why you wouldn’t want to use hydrogen peroxide on your cannabis because it will even burn off terpenes, producing lower quality cannabis.
It should also be noted that when combining some of these approved sprays, the chemical reactions are still unknown. Hydrogen peroxide, for example, is highly reactive so it is entirely possible it will form other toxic slurries when combined with sprays like mineral oil.
What About Residuals?
You have heard that pesticides are strictly regulated? Well, perhaps you would be surprised learning none of the approved pesticides have their residuals tested for. They are only testing for non-approved pesticides like myclobutanil or bifenazate, incredibly toxic substances.
An unlimited amount of residual pesticide can be left in your good old weed so long as it is one of the approved ones. Judging by the harsh smoke and black ash, none of us should be surprised to find just how dirty some of the legal weed really is.
Featured image courtesy of Medium.