By JAY BARMANN IN NEWS 2017
Cannabis sold at Bay Area dispensaries is regularly referred to as "medicine," however a lack of regulation and testing around the product has led to significant supply of marijuana on dispensary shelves being tainted and/or toxic to the people who consume it.
Following the recent HempCon at the Cow Palace in August, an array of medical marijuana products underwent testing by Hunters Point-based Anresco Laboratories. As San Francisco Magazine reports, some 80 percent of those tested from California-based growers and dispensaries, were tainted with mold, fungus, bacteria, pesticides, or harmful solvents — and the popular concentrates and oils used in vape pens and dabs can, because they're concentrated, contain much higher amounts of these toxins.
"We sometimes see 20 or 30 percent of our samples coming through the lab significantly contaminated with molds," said Dr. Donald Land of Steep Hill Laboratories in Berkeley. But after sampling from 20 dispensaries across California and analyzing the cannabis down to its DNA, Land told CBS 5 at the time that he was shocked to find "ninety percent of those samples had something on them. Some DNA of some pathogen."
SF Mag goes further into Anresco's results, finding that pesticides and fungicides can appear in cannabis extracts at 1,000 times the level of concentration typically found in foods. These chemicals include things like myclobutanil, which sold under the brand name Eagle 20, and which can cause cancer and has reportedly sickened cannabis consumers in Canada.
