As a legal cannabis industry expands, there is growing concern about its environmental impacts. And with federal overseers restricted by law from even funding research, much less regulating the industry, the scientific community has had to respond independently of the government. One matter now under study today is how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by potent strains could be contributing to air pollution, particularly when those strains are grown next to highways.<\/p>\n
Scientists have long been aware that VOCs emitted by plants can contribute to smog formation \u2014 and\u00a0terpenes<\/a>\u00a0are powerful VOCs. They can mix with nitrogen oxides, emitted by cars and industrial sources, in sunlight-driven reactions that produce ground-level ozone.<\/p>\n Atmospheric scientist William Vizuete this week spoke to the magazine\u00a0Science<\/a>\u00a0about how he and his team grew the dozen cannabis plants permitted per household under\u00a0Colorado<\/a>\u00a0law in a garage in Boulder. But the University of North Carolina researcher and his colleagues weren\u2019t interested in smoking. Rather, they sought to measure the VOCs released into the air as the plants grew. The varieties they chose to study were Lemon Wheel, Elephant Purple and Rockstar Kush.<\/p>\n The results were just published in the journal\u00a0Atmospheric Environment<\/a>, and they suggest that the more than 600 indoor legal grows in Denver could be worsening the city\u2019s air pollution problem.<\/p>\n Vizuete\u2019s study raises the possibility that the tens of thousands of plants in Denver\u2019s indoor grows, largely situated along two busy highways, could \u2014 in a worst-case scenario \u2014 double the city\u2019s output of smog-forming VOCs.<\/p>\n A story in\u00a0Pacific Standard<\/a>\u00a0magazine last year on the social impacts of Denver\u2019s fast-expanding cannabis industry also noted that most of the big commercial grows are clustered along the city\u2019s two major traffic arteries: I-25 and I-70.<\/p>\n If the pot farms \u201care putting out a significant amount of terpenes, there is not a worse place to put them,\u201d Vizuete told Science. \u201cIf I was designing an ozone reactor, this is what I\u2019d do.\u201d<\/p>\n Denver\u2019s air pollution problem is a serious one. Local environmental group\u00a0Wild Earth Guardians<\/a>\u00a0just announced its intention to sue the EPA for allowing the Denver Metro-North Front Range Area of Colorado to be out of compliance with the 2008 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS<\/a>) past the deadline of July 20, 2018. The NAAQS were established under the authority of the 1970 Clean Air Act, which means the EPA is failing to enforce a major federal environmental statute, the group charged. And ozone is particularly at issue.<\/p>\n And where the terpene-smog connection is concerned, the EPA won\u2019t even look at the question because of the illegality of cannabis under federal law. Vizuete had to work in a garage because cannabis plants aren\u2019t allowed into Boulder\u2019s federally funded\u00a0National Center for Atmospheric Research<\/a>, where he had initially hoped to run the study. He told Science that researchers who want to study cannabis \u201care stuck in a position where we have to cobble this together on our own.\u201d<\/p>\n The state, fortunately, is taking up some of the slack. A more far-reaching study of the actual Denver-area cultivation sites and their possible impact on air quality is about to be undertaken by Kaitlin Urso of the\u00a0Air Pollution Control Division<\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. \u201cEPA has left us holding the bag,\u201d Urso told Science.<\/p>\n Vizuete last year\u00a0co-authored<\/a>\u00a0an opinion piece, published by the journal\u00a0Environmental Science and Technology<\/a>, calling on the EPA and other\u00a0federal agencies to fund studies on state-legal cannabis cultivation. Entitled \u201cHigh Time to Assess the Environmental Impacts of Cannabis Cultivation,\u201d the editorial also made note of the better-understood question of indoor cultivation\u2019s massive carbon footprint. This is a particular concern in Colorado, where indoor cultivation is the only kind that\u2019s allowed.<\/p>\n But in\u00a0California<\/a>, too, even outdoor cultivation takes a toll \u2014 for instance, in\u00a0groundwater depletion<\/a>.<\/p>\n And as long as the\u00a0EPA remains intransigent<\/a>\u00a0on extending oversight, it is all the more important that independent researchers, state authorities and (above all) consumers bring pressure to bear for a responsible industry.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think the government should be more concerned about the environmental impact of the cannabis industry?<\/p>\n The post Colorado Researchers Explore Link Between Terpenes & Air Pollution<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
As a legal cannabis industry expands, there is growing concern about its environmental impacts. And with federal overseers restricted by law from even funding research, much less regulating the industry, the scientific community has had to respond independently of the government. One matter now under study today is how volatileContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7432,50,21,99,693,759,7433,4552,7434,1598],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32584,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32583\/revisions\/32584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Terpene-Ozone Connection<\/h4>\n
EPA Drops the Ball<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Colorado Researchers Explore Link Between Terpenes & Air Pollution<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"