Yes!!! This is very very true! I work in the industry and our company has partnerships with ISO approved labs and Doc is exactly correct. Almost all flower/biomass and concentrates are testing positive for concerning levels of pesticides, leftover solvents... bacteria like ecoli and other things that nobody should be smoking.
The good news is mid next year, all legal businesses will have to have product tested by an approved and standardized lab with a Certificate of Approval attached to each batch and a middleman (distributor's) role will be to ensure all product to/from farm to end user has a chain of custody with it, that it tests clean, and if it doesn't, can either be cleaned to test clean or destroyed... which should help clean up the industry. This wont be enforced until around July 2018 though.
The first project our company has permitted is our extraction lab and it is almost impossible to find raw biomass in large quantities (100lbs-2000lbs+) that test clean... almost none of it is.. and without saying names, a lot of large brands in the industry could care less whether its contaminated right now with testing not being mandated at this time. Its sad that money and greed just blinds them to end user health. Part of the reason I started to grow my own, and don't use concentrate products.
Some of this though happens unknowingly...even if the grower does not use pesticides. Some people have been finding that outdoor and greenhouse grows are being contaminated from blow off from neighboring grape and other agriculture farms. (where things like Eagle 20 are permissible). Another finding lately is that if you get clones from a mother plant that has been treated with pesticide, and then you buy clones from that mother plant and flower them out, they are finding that even pesticide will contaminate the end product of the clone, from a mother that was treated, even if the cloned plant was not treated. Be careful where you get your clones from...
Its such a blessing to have this community and people like Doc who have put together a easy, successful way to grow top notch cannabis... so we don't have to worry about things like we would going to dispensaries and buying from unknown and untested sources.
Doc also brought up a good point about outdoor growing....Make sure you check your city ordinance and if you are in unincorporated, check your county ordinance. Prop 64 which now has been combined with Maucursa to form Sb94 allows the local city and county governments to "reasonably regulate" peoples voted right to 6 plants... Many many cities have banned outdoor growing...even if you own acres of land... so be careful and become familiar with local ordinances.... Some cities have even gone as far as requiring permits and inspections to grow your "legal 6 plants" so be cautious and informed what your city ordinances propose. This is the rights given by prop 64... which is why I was so against it last year when it was up for vote... its a shame in many ways that it passed due to many voters not reading all of the bill text... and believing the little cute sounding paragraph that was included with your voting pamphlets... sucks because now we are stuck with it and Doc is right.... its favoring the big "corporate" companies with VC backing and millions of investment dollars, and for a small grower to be legal now... you pretty much need multiple millions of dollars to even think about it...
Great post Doc!!! Since this is what I do for my job I figured I would confirm your comments and add a little extra to them of what is going on in the industry...
Also, for those that are not using Docs kit... research all of your nutrients for heavy metals..... a lot of commercially available products, and even some mined nutrients like soft rock phosphate, and azomite contain concerning levels of heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and mercury. Washington State has an excellent resource to look up all nutrients, organic, mined and synthetic to find the lab test results and heavy metal analysis's.. I was surprised to find popular products that many growers use filled with lead and arsenic. To find the resource just google "washington pesticide nutrient list" and it should pull up in the 1st or 2nd post.
Sorry for the long post in your thread Doc, but you brought up some very important facts that all should know about what is really going on in the industry, and why growing your own, especially with people like Docs guidance is so important for a healthy product
Best thing... grow your own... even better best thing.... grow high brix
Kudos Doc for bringing these things up
