There isn’t a lot of infrastructure in the Dakota’s so we have to solve problems on our own and growing isn’t my thing. Cleaning bud for mold or bacteria’s without taking it to oil would be incredibly helpful thanks!
Yuck.
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Gross
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There are a couple machines using Gamma Radiation. But mold remediation on biomass is otherwise a just say no kinda deal.
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Gotta dip 'em in ZeroTol I guess 
but I’m with everyone else. Wouldn’t be able to sell that and sleep good at night.
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I’ve used this remediation method before. Honestly, worked pretty well. Flower seemed about the same as the starting material, and it passed the test.
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Yup, I’ve never seen gamma bud fail after remediation. Just freaks me out using machines emitting that amount of gamma waves lol supposedly harmless. But might make your Bruce Banner 4 all that much stronger 
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He could try washing the buds as they are harvested. Peroxide and baking soda in the first dunk, then clean water after that.
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Its not typical radioactive sources creating the gamma like Co-60 for example (lots of medical tools use cobalt sources or atleast did before the dirtybomb scare) but rather a special bulb to generate x rays. Atleast from what ive collected.
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Forgive my ignorance but are you saying theyre not using cobalt 60 with these types of machines?
“Patented Quastar® Photonic Decontamination™ Technology”
Not really sure what that means lol… but these are the units I’ve seen in action.
After a quick read it appears you are correct, these machines are using some form of modified x ray.
“When it comes to x-ray field output, beam hardness, uniformity and versatility, the Quastar x-ray emitter is second to none. Quastar’s patented technology provides the ability to produce a greater photon flux of higher energy x-rays while filtering the weak x-rays that cause uneven dose treatment.”
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From a scientific source:
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26121/chapter/7#77
Why it matters: when you throw away your system, goofballs will rob them and break open the device and scrap the metals and then maybe die or maybe not. The next steps is waiting for someone to detect it before, or even worse, after melting, alloying and distributing it to buildings for use like in this case:
1982 – In northern Taiwan, a Cobalt-60 source was recycled with steel into rebar and used in the construction of apartment buildings, principally in Taipei from 1982 through 1984. Over 2,000 apartment units and shops were suspected as having been built using the material.[10] About 10,000 people are believed to have been exposed to long-term low-level irradiation as a result.[11] In the summer of 1992, a utility worker for the Taiwanese state-run electric utility Taipower brought a Geiger counter to his apartment to learn more about the device, and discovered that his apartment was contaminated.[11] Despite awareness of the problem, owners of some of the buildings known to be contaminated have continued to rent apartments to tenants (in part because selling the units is illegal). Some research has shown that the radiation has had a “beneficial” effect upon the health of the tenants based on the death rate from cancers,[12] Another study looking at the incidence of cancer found that although the overall risk of cancer was sharply reduced (SIR = 0.6, 95% CI 0.5 – 0.7), the incidence of certain leukemias in men (n = 6, SIR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2 – 7.4) and thyroid cancer in women (n = 6, SIR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.0 – 5.7) were more prevalent. [13][14]
Should be noted that just because you killed all the mold doesn’t necessarily do anything to clean up the mycotoxins that have already formed.
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EXCELLENT point. Poor cancer patient catch those mycotoxins its game over.
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It is totally possible to test for mycotoxins… which don’t just form all on their own. They need the appropriate environment and food (aka seeds/seed fats) to usually do so. Which is why people focus so much on them in GRAINS but not so much in other stuff.
I’ve got a thread started to talk about endotoxins… AKA the dead body parts of those irradiated micro-organisms. Are you thinking about endotoxins?
What is your friend trying to clean up? Why is he trying to clean it up? There are lots of technologies to do this. As this thread so kindly has pointed out - plenty of people think that you shouldn’t do this… even though almost all other consumer goods go through sanitation or sterilization processes… apparently cannabis is just bougie enough that people think sanitation is inappropriate?
Lots of ways…
- Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxides
- Exposure to Ozone
- Exposure to Chlorine Dioxide
- Microwave Irradiation
- X-Ray Irradiation
- Exposure to Ultraviolet Light
- Extraction processes with filtration steps
Some of these things are better for molds than they are for bacteria. It would be helpful to know just “how much” contamination they are dealing with. What kind of contamination (since prevention is important know what it is helps with that) so that the best kind of treatment can be used.
And then consider the endotoxins left behind (these will definitely be there!) and the possibility for mycotoxins being left behind (its possible these are there…).
And also things like - is the cannabis visibly moldy? People generally don’t like it when anything is moldy… think strawberries and bread - do you buy them when you can see mold on them? Probably not… But also - most strawberries and bread are contaminated with microorganisms and given enough time that will become visible, even if its not already.
Lots of things to think about. Its possible that someone will have equipment available in the Dakota… certainly there is equipment in Montana and Colorado that can do this work, and some of it is mobile.
There’s plenty ways to get there. If you have decided that its appropriate to do so (given the feedback of the thread) and that decontaminating the cannabis won’t leave undesirables behind (visible contaminates/endotoxins/mycotoxins…)
Feel free to HMU via the DM if you want further guidance or assistance with this.
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I agree, personally, I think there should be a mycotoxin test that’s completely independent of the mold test. Two separate issues. It’s already that way in my state and a bunch of others.
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Gamma Irradiation is used widely in Canada but its not practical to us Gamma in the US for a number of reasons. However the alternative is X-Ray from Rad Source. I work for Rad Source and we have almost 300 cabinet X-Ray devices in the cannabis industry.
I get the fear around irradiation. Not a lot of people fully understand it, but the vast majority of blood for transfusions run through our device
Blood Irradiation | Rad Source Technologies.
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The Rad Source relies on bremsstrahlung (rather than characteristic x-rays) that is just dialed in to emit predominantly higher energy x-rays onto the product right?
Its important to understand the diffrence between gamma and xray. Gamma Ray are produced through nuclear reactions or radioactive decay. Where as X-Rays are electrically produced and therefore no radioactive isotope and its more like a light bulb x-ray emitter creating photons.
However, our patened Quastar emitter should not be confused with the 100+ year old point source emitter that you may be familiar with from imaging x-ray.
We are finishing up a new web site that explains all this, but Ill give a sneak preview with the slides below
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Are mycotoxins not being tested for in full panels they are required to take? To my knowledge we had to pass them