Anyone have a recommendation for a lab that can test for heavy metals? Talking to a local lab they said they didn’t have the equipment to test for it and claimed “nobody does”. My bullshit alarms went off at that statement, but after scouring this site I don’t exactly see anyone talking about labs testing for heavy metals either, so I thought I’d ask because we are having customer requests for it.
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Heavy metals can be removed by adsorption with bentonite clay.
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That’s good to know. Do you think a filter bed would suffice? As I’ll be dealing with hemp, isomerization in a hot scrub is a real concern.
Now for a lab that can prove it on paper and put customer concerns at ease…
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It does seem rather weird that heavy metal testing isnt a big issue, isnt cannabis really really good at absorbing and accumulating heavy metals from the soil its growing in?
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In my state inorganic Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and total Mercury must be tested for, so our lab tests for some heavy metals by law. We are able to test for additional metals if required. We use ICP-OES for our metal testing. Message me if you want some additional information
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Avazyme… Great people and results in couple days
Any certified compliance lab in California can. They are required to test for heavy metals here.
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All certified labs in California have to be able to do it.
You are not allowed to outsource test, so a cannabis lab needs to provide all tests required which includes heavy metals.
We use these guys for testing. They are in Monrovia and just do cannabis although the website is somewhat unclear (because they had problems banking its somewhat hidden is what i’m told).
https://www.phs-lab.com/services-pagecat.html?cPath=333
I’m pretty sure like the other guys stated that its the standard now here in Cali. We use belcosta labs in long beach. I didn’t catch what state you are in.
I’m in NM. There is only one game in town (in the whole damn state to my knowledge) right now after our department of health ran Steep Hill out of town, and they are gaining a reputation for being exceptionally inaccurate with even potency testing. Plus they don’t test for isomers, so it looks like out of state is my best option right now.
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I wish everywhere had a Proposition 65.
I’m in Massachusetts and the dispensaries don’t test for heavy metals.
You are wrong on MA, EVERYTHING gets tested for heavy metals. Flower and extracts.
My bad its pesticides i was thinking.
Old Sage Cannabis packaging (Prior to them becoming SiraNaturals)
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I have a more recent packaging from Alternative Therapies Group (ATG) it says slightly the same thing. but I’m pretty sure all the dispensaries have the same label.
Naw, they do pesticide testing too. There was only 2 labs that could do it for a while in the state, I think all 4 are qualified now. Mass has some of the most stringent testing requirements of any US state. They are really testing to a pharma standards. This includes representative sampling of harvests, ie they have to test a i think 8-10 samples for each 5 pound lot of flower, not one potency test for an entire harvest. It is a pain for the operators, but a real boon for the customers. Testing accuracy is much higher in mass than some other states like NJ, OR, and CO.
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I knew we were highly anal about our standards but damn.
Colorado has similar requirements all based upon production batch (concentrates) or harvest batch size. A complex set of rules for sure. The state also does baseline testing with all of the test labs several times a year where they send samples from the same batch out to all of the labs and then plot the results against their reference testing they do internally. Any lab that is significantly off from that baseline gets put on the hotseat. The labs get to see a plot of the test results but don’t get to see the names of the other labs, only their own.
To answer the OP’s question, CO has just started requiring heavy metal testing this year. I’m not sure if you can do METRC transfers from another state though. You would have to ask one of the labs here.
Test America in Phoenix can do metals by ICP-MS. Most commercial labs have a metals package. We use to call it the"Inorganic 8" Cu, Pb, Se, Cd, Ar, Cr, Hg… Be careful of different state laws when crossing borders.
we want to do heavy metals for the cbd carts,would you help us with it,thanks.