The cannabis industry can be confusing. There are so many unfamiliar words, so many acronyms, so many cannabinoids, so many terpenes, so many products that seem the same but have slight differences, and so many myths and misconceptions. It’s exhausting, to be quite honest with you. At Himalayan High, we want to help you understand what this plant can do for you, and what it can’t. Education and knowledge are a big part of what we do here, so let’s get to it. Basically, remediated means, “cleaned”. When you pick a cucumber out of the garden, wash it off in the sink and trim off a little blemish with a paring knife before you eat it, you just “remediated” your garden produce. Was it edible straight off the stem? Yes, and always has been. Is it more appealing and slightly healthier after cleaning and trimming? Also yes. Would everybody’s backyard produce be clean enough and healthy enough to sell in Big Y? Maybe. That’s the remediation question.
What Is Remediated Cannabis?
Remediated cannabis products are pretty standard in the commercial and retail cannabis industries in all states. Essentially, remediation involves “cleaning” or purifying cannabis flower or cannabis derived products. Most growers use remediation to some extent to correct slight, natural, environmental contaminants. Cannabis remediation refers to processes used to remove or reduce contaminants (like mold, pesticides, heavy metals, or microbial load) in cannabis products to ensure they meet safety standards. It’s particularly relevant when cannabis fails laboratory testing and needs to be “cleaned” for legal sale. Growing cannabis is generally pretty easy. Growing clean, uncontaminated, organically “sterile” cannabis is a whole different story. That’s why cannabis commissions in all legal states have testing thresholds. Cannabis is a plant and will encounter some environmental variabilities during its lifecycle. Remediation assures that those external factors don’t adversely affect the quality or safety of the flower. Greater technology and more money spent on the grow facility can reduce the need for remediation, but it’s generally a good idea, just to be safe.
Why Remediate and What are the Consequences?
Remediation is used most often to slightly clean contaminants from a crop, or from portions of a crop so it can be processed or sold. Cannabis cultivation is expensive and risky. If a simple, non-invasive technique can be used to salvage a harvest and prevent a grower from suffering a huge financial loss, it makes sense. Doing one or two of these steps ensures regulatory compliance, protects consumer health, limits waste, and reduces loss. If for some reason raw flower isn’t of high enough quality visually or environmentally to sell as flower, it can be processed and remediated into purified oils or concentrates to be used in other cannabis applications. If used sparingly and conservatively, remediation has little to no effect on the usefulness of the product. Overdoing it could spoil some of your terpenes or reduce your THC potency by a few points. But that’s about it. There is a stigma in the industry about the “evils of remediation”, but that’s mostly due to lack of understanding. If done correctly, it improves the safety of the product without any real negative effects.
How Do They Remediate?
There are several ways to remediate cannabis products, depending on whether you’re looking to clean flower or manufactured goods. All of them are effective in achieving their goals, and most have no detrimental effect on the flower if done carefully and thoughtfully. These methods can range from something as simple as hand-trimming to remove small spots of mold from the bud to more complicated laboratory techniques like extraction and distillation to remove potential pesticides or trace heavy metals from your finished products. One important point to note: there is nothing WRONG with remediated cannabis products. In the vast majority of cases, it is used as an insurance policy to make certain you are getting the absolute best quality, cleanest, healthiest products possible.
What Does Remediation Do for Flower?
Remediation works in a few ways. For flower, the main culprits in need of being remediated are mold, microbes, pesticides (if used) and other biotic factors. These are all natural contaminants and will be found on almost all agricultural produce. Unless a given grow facility has extensive HEPA filters, Ultraviolet-C air purification, near sterile atmospheric conditions, and a near perfect human workflow, there will most likely be a little bit of contamination at some point. State regulators allow for minimal amounts of contamination in flower, below very strict thresholds, with the practical understanding that growing 100% clean plants naturally is nearly impossible. The typical methods of purifying these issues are relatively simple. Exposing the plant material to Ultraviolet C light, brief x-rays, or ozone gas to disinfect and kill the unwanted organisms. As long as the exposure time is limited, there will be very little effect on the terpene content or cannabinoid levels of the flower. Too much time being gassed or irradiated will eventually degrade your terpenes and damage your cannabinoids. If the crop is somehow too contaminated to be sold as smokeable flower, it can be remediated and processed into nearly sterile, clean oil for use in gummies, concentrates and other infusions.
Other Forms of Remediation
The other common methods of remediation in the cannabis industry involve precisely applied chemistry and physics, and are generally used on oils or to make oils. The most common technique is the buddy system of extraction and distillation. This involves (usually) using a solvent like ethanol, hexane, butane, etc. to wash the isolated cannabinoids and terpenes off the flower, then using controlled distillation (fast evaporation) to remove the solvent and recover the desired compounds. This works especially well to get rid of pesticides, metals and biologic contaminants because the combination of carefully chosen solvents and strictly controlled distillation temperatures allow for targeted removal or retention of specific components or compounds. The studied use of solvents in already processed oils can also improve the visual appeal by improving the product’s clarity, making it lighter in color, or making it more mild in taste.
So, Remediation Isn’t a Bad Word?
Not really. Remediation is pretty much a necessary “evil” in the cannabis world. Because state regulators have strict rules for what kinds of contaminants are allowed in agricultural products and how
much can be present, most products go through a little bit of tender loving care before hitting the shelves. As suggested in the earlier food metaphor, remediation is not intrinsically a good or bad thing. Wiping an apple on your sleeve before biting into it to remove pesticides or environmental residue is a form of remediation we do without even thinking about it. Some farms and growers are more mindful about what they use in the soil, in the water, and on the foliage and thus require less remediation when it’s all said and done. ARUNA, out of Lee and TWISTED GROWERS out of Lakeville Mass are a couple of the few local growers who are proud to announce they are exclusively “remediation free”. As Twisted says, “Our Guarantee. No Mold. No Mildew. No Fungus. No Chemicals. No Compromises. At Twisted Growers, we grow cannabis the right way — clean from seed to sale, using elite genetics and state-of-the-art indoor practices to ensure purity, potency, and safety.”
