Lead is (generally) not your friend.

Red dots show the location of all growers of regulated cannabis (GORCs) that fall either within 1 mile of DOE-identified legacy orchard lands or within 1,000 ft of a major road or motorway. Green dots show GORCs that are further away from these potential sources of lead contamination.

In 1923, some genius decided that adding lead to gasoline would be a good thing. My best guess is that the presence of lead decreased the wear and tear on certain parts of the engine. By the 1970s, lead toxicity — while well known medically — began to be a bigger concern because lead poisoning was on the increase in the general population. By 1996, leaded gasoline was banned in the US.

Between lead in the gasoline, lead in certain solders used to join metal waterpipes together, lead in domestic paint and (presumably) lead in pencils, increasing numbers of children were showing up with signs of lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is nasty. Lead tends to stay with you. It tends to poison you for the rest of your presumably now-shortened life.

While pencils can move around, most historic sources of lead were point sources. Either the paint in your home was or was not permeated with lead. Either the water in your dwelling was or was not running over solder permeated with lead or in pipes that had lead in their alloys. It has been, frankly, a bit of a crap shoot. At least the use of leaded paint and lead-based solders is no longer allowed in the relevant parts of residential construction.

Legacy orchard lands (LOLs) were identified recently by the Dept. of Ecology. Ecology’s interest in LOLs stems, in part, because of the legacy use of toxic and persistent pesticides that are no longer allowed. LOLs, it seems, often had a pesticide called lead arsenide sprayed on them. Some of them also had pesticides like DDT sprayed on them — something that we stopped doing over 50 years ago because of the toxicity and persistence of DDx (DDT and two of it’s breakdown chemicals DDE and DDD). As with lead, when DDT got into the soil, it tended to stay there for a very long time.

During the spraying of lead arsenide, some of the pesticide would generally drift outside of the boundaries of the area being sprayed. How the farmer sprayed and the wind conditions at the time of spraying and shortly thereafter largely determined how far the pesticide would spread beyond the targeted orchard. The lead (and arsenic) in that pesticide tends to persist for many many years in soil that has been contaminated. Over the years, some of that soil gets blown around and spreads to nearby areas, further increasing the number of lands that may be contaminated.

I’ve already identified those GORCs (growers of regulated cannabis) whose farms fall within 1 mile of lands identified by Ecology as LOLs. I have not named them, but my previous post contains a series of detailed maps that, hopefully, allow GORCs to assess the degree of proximity between their farms and LOLs. Generally speaking, if lead arsenide (or DDT or other toxic and persistent chemicals) were used on these lands, the likelihood of contamination is greater the closer one gets to the land upon which the chemicals were originally applied.

Last week, I sent letters out to the 157 GORCs that fall within 1 mile of LOLs and suggested that they might want to consider having their soil and possibly water and possibly finished product tested for the presence of DDx, lead and arsenic (the other component of lead arsenide). From their responses, it is clear that many of them HAVE done exactly that. They were, apparently, aware of the risk and they did something about it. Good on them. Farmers like that clearly care about the safety of their product.

I have also heard back from two farmers (actually, 1 farmer and 1 ex farmer who really got messed around by his local Walla Walla county officials when he was trying to get up and running) who (to paraphrase) think that I hate GORCs and am trying to weaponize state data to cause them harm. One of them even suggested that I was being paid by either a) indoor growers or b) cannabis testing labs to come up with what they characterize as “bullshit” that is without factual merit and is intended to enrich myself and to harm GORCs.

The first farmer is someone whose farms sit right on top of a legacy orchard identified in Ecology’s dataset. He maintains that it has NEVER been an orchard, it has ALWAYS grown just alfalfa, and that the sun kisses his soil in such a way as to make it not only unharmful but good in a special sunkissed kind of way. Fair enough. He may be right. In my experience, there are very few (if any) datasets out there that are 100% accurate. To that end, and as a service to that farmer, I have identified his farm location to the DOE and shared with them that he has been quite vocal about the inaccuracy of their database on LOLs (at least, in the case of his farm). I expect they will look into it and, if they see a need to correct an error concerning the orchard they have identified under the location of his cannabis farms, then they will likely do so. If they do, I’ll acknowledge that change and re-do my list of GORCs in close proximity to LOLs.

The second farmer is someone that is, apparently, a friend of the first farmer and is an ex-GORC that has recently left the country. He has pointed out extensively on one of my FB posts on this issue that the entire state is contaminated, depending on one’s perspective (I think he was trying to be sarcastic, but am not sure). I feel for him. His local county (Walla Walla) really messed with his ability to grow regulated cannabis back in the day. His departure suggests that those small-minded bureaucrats eventually got the best of him. I wish him well in his new life. The one point he made that I truly took to heart was that contamination is EVERYWHERE. He’s right, but that fact simply reinforces that AMOUNT (or DOSE) IS EVERYTHING when one is considering toxicity.

Washington state does not require testing for heavy metals in any of the adult-use cannabis products that are being consumed by almost 2,000,000 Washingtonians every year. The Dept. of Health requires such testing for the tiny amount of “Medical Grade” product that is produced, but the other 98.6% of product in the state is, generally, not tested for the presence of heavy metals. Folks consuming product produced to DOH standards need not worry about lead, arsenic, cadmium or mercury levels in their cannabis. Folks consuming product NOT produced by TrailBlazin Productions or Skagit Organics should likely not feel quite as safe that the product they are consuming is safe with respect to heavy metals contamination. I would throw Washington Bud Company into the mix as a “certified” safe supplier, simply because they also tested to DOH standards for years (successfully), until the general failure of the regulated medical cannabis system in this state (another story to be covered on another day) became apparent, and the extra costs associated with that testing were no longer deemed necessary. To be complete, Fairways Consulting also tests most (?) of their products to DOH standards, so they are likely a good bet to be free of heavy metals. I tend to count the way they sourced product from Unicorn Brands during the “hemp-derived delta 8” days as a negative, so I did not put them where they belonged up with TrailBlazin’ Productions and Skagit Organics as the only three (to my knowledge) licensees in the state producing product today that is certified “medical grade” by the DOH. If any other farms out there are producing DOH Medical-grade product, please let me know. The product of such farms, if any exist, will also have been tested for heavy metals.

As I am in the middle of writing a petition for an “emergency” rule to require the testing of heavy metals by all suppliers in Washington’s regulated cannabis industry, I spent some time during this beautiful weekend that just passed assessing what impact, if any, might be expected from the legacy use of lead in gasoline might have on cannabis produced in this state. To that end, I extended the work I did on the legacy orchards and identified any and all GORCs whose growing locations fall within 1,000 feet of major roads and/or motorways within the state. The idea here is (similar to how over-spray of pesticides could contaminate surrounding land) that the exhaust of cars burning leaded gas would spew out lead and small particles containing lead and that those particles and tiny bits of lead would blow around and tend to settle to the ground after awhile. The “random” nature of such particulate spread is such that one would expect levels of contamination to be inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the initial point of contamination.

The question is: WHERE is that point of contamination? Cars are generally moving while they burn gas and are generally not moving when they don’t burn gas. Hence, roads are likely to be the primary points (lines) of contamination from leaded gasoline exhaust.

To that end, I generalized what I did with the 1-mile buffers around LOLs and created 1,000 foot buffers around major roads and motorways (circa about 2010). 1,000 feet were chosen, as that is the minimum separation required between cannabis access points (stores) and things they might “poison” — like children in schools or at transit stops, etc. Other than that, the 1,000 feet is arbitrary. The lead from leaded gas certainly can (and has) spread farther than 1,000 feet from old highways and the soil 10 feet from an old highway is likely to have more lead in it than is the soil 100 feet from the old highway. Similarly, that soil 100 feet from the old highway likely has more lead in it that does the soil 1,000 feet away.

The map at the top of this post identifies, using red dots, all growers of regulated cannabis (GORCs) that lie either within 1 mile of legacy orchard lands (LOLs) identified by the Dept. of Ecology or within 1,000 feet of a major road or motorway within the state. The green dots are GORCs that fall outside of both of these buffer zones.

I don’t know if the product being produced by these farms is safe. I do not know if it is unsafe. What I DO know is that the identified GORCs lie either within 1 mile of at least one LOL and/or within 1,000 feet of an old major road or highway. Please note that I am not naming names here (although I know which farms these are). I am, simply, showing the potential extent of the problem — if, indeed, a problem actually exists.

By extension, the risk of lead contamination is elevated in the farms identified with red dots. I will be including the following table in my rulemaking petition to the LCB later this week. It points out that 394 GORCs, representing almost 40% of the canopy currently licensed in this state’s regulated cannabis industry, are at elevated risk for lead contamination.

We are coming up on 9 years of the availability of regulated and taxed cannabis in the state of Washington. Hence, we are also coming up on 9 years of potential exposure to cannabis contaminated with lead by some fraction of the 2,000,000-odd people that source at least some of their cannabis from the state’s regulated system.

Lead does not generally kill you right away and it may never kill you. It’s harms tend to show up first in children that have been exposed. This is because sufficient levels of lead impact some of the physiological systems associated with growing up. One of the first signs of adult lead poisoning is, often, abnormalities seen in children born of women who have accumulated sufficient amounts of lead in their bodies for it to represent a problem for fetal development.

Probably the most well-known stories regarding widespread heavy metals poisoning in children stemmed from mercury exposure in Japan. Those stories, coming from a time when dolphin meat was often fed to school children are rather horrific, and I won’t bother repeating them here. The effects of accumulating enough lead in one’s body are not identical to those associated with mercury, but they are not good. Hence, the push in recent decades to rid ourselves of lead paint in our homes and schools and lead solder and pipes in the water systems that serve such locations.

One thing that is consistently associated with lead poisoning are decreases in IQ (intelligence). That might explain alot around here — and may even explain some of the behavior of that poor farmer that is being so unfairly treated by the DOE’s map of legacy orchard lands.

My point is … quite literally hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians (and visitors to the state) may have been exposed to lead in their cannabis and may be further exposing themselves to lead every time they consume product from their favorite farm (if their farm is one with lead contamination). We just don’t know … and we won’t know until such time as the WSLCB comes around to the realization that a plant that is known for it’s excellent ability to suck up heavy metals from contaminated soil should probably be tested for heavy metals contamination.  It would be nice if they began doing that before the party that is the spending of billions of dollars in cannabis-generated tax revenue is over.

I suppose it is good that the state is getting all of that cannabis tax revenue. Some of those tax dollars may, after all, one day be needed to pay for managing the epidemic of lead poisoning that the WSLCB’s intransigence regarding consumer protection has created.

Or maybe not. We won’t know until we start measuring heavy metal contamination in this state’s regulated cannabis.

Off to finish writing my rule petition. I’ll let you know how it goes.