UNDERSTANDING CANNABIS EMISSIONS FOR IMPROVED AIR QUALITY

Hi, I am Dr. William Vizuete, Chief Scientific Officer at Pacific Environmental Analytics. For the past six years I have led a team of cannabis industry experts focused on site-specific research to increase overall knowledge of cannabis industry emissions, educate local communities and improve the tools and methods that cultivators and policymakers use to better evaluate the environmental impacts of cannabis cultivation, processing and manufacturing. Over the next year I will host a discussion each month on a particular cannabis-related topic with the goal of improving our collective understanding of a variety of facets that impact the overall cannabis industry.

In this our inaugural edition I would like address Cannabis Terpenoid Emission Factor Measurements for the purposes of measuring the potential impacts of cannabis cultivation on air quality. The overall goal of this project was to quantify the emission capacities of various cannabis strains at both juvenile and mature growth stages in order to investigate their potential impact on atmospheric distributions of terpenoids and other biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs). Although there are existing models available for estimating BVOC emissions, the lack of emission factors for cannabis strains limits accurate estimation of their emission rates. Therefore, the quantification of speciated emission factors for a comprehensive range of terpenoid compounds and other BVOC is required in order to know the impact of a specific strain of cannabis. To accomplish this, we conducted enclosure measurements of terpenoid emissions from cannabis strains growing in a greenhouse environment and calculated emission factors in ug g-1 h -1 (micrograms compound per gram dry weight per hour at leaf conditions of temperature= 30°C and light = 1000 umol visible light m-2 s -1). The primary output is a dataset of terpenoid emission factors that is suitable for use in biogenic emission models that drive air quality simulations.

What did our studies reveal to help you better understand the cannabis business? Leaf enclosure studies to measure cannabis emission factors provide a wealth of data that provide whole new insights into the cannabis plant biology and its potential impact, or lack thereof, on air quality and the overall environment.