The biggest barrier to reducing toxic pesticides in cannabis is, not surprisingly, the cannabis industry itself.

California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana. When labs started reporting they were finding high levels of pesticide residues, the Los Angeles city government “covertly acquired and then tested three medical cannabis samples available to patients through dispensaries and found that in two of the [three] samples exceedingly high levels of bifenthrin [a pesticide] were found,” up to a thousand times the legal limit.

But how much ends up inside the consumer? As I discuss in my video Pesticides in Marijuana, only about 10 percent of the pesticides in tobacco make it through a filtered cigarette, which was found to be comparable to using cannabis in a water pipe with filters attached. But, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:45 in my video, if you use a regular bong, about half of the pesticides end up in your lungs, and using a glass pipe is even worse. Because most users don’t attach a carbon filter with 7.5 grams of activated charcoal to their bongs, “in general the portion of pesticide recovery is alarmingly high and is a serious concern.” “Although it remains unknown precisely how damaging these chemicals are to humans, the fact they are present in smoke at such high levels should be concerning.” According to researchers, “Considering these results, high pesticide exposure through cannabis smoking is a significant possibility, which may lead to further health complications in cannabis consumers”—especially if we’re talking about medical marijuana use by sick, vulnerable people.

“The potential of pesticide and chemical residue exposures to cannabis users is substantial and may pose a significant toxicological threat in the absence of adequate regulatory frameworks.” Okay, so what are states doing about it? Colorado recently suffered some high profile recalls of marijuana batches contaminated with harmful pesticides that made it into some of the edibles. Evidently, “growers sometimes find themselves quite overwhelmed by pest issues…[and] resort to nuclear tactics,” trying anything to protect their crops. This has created “a public safety threat,” with “intensified toxicity in concentrated products of particular concern.” In fact, “pesticide levels were approximately 10x higher in concentrated cannabis products,” like the oils and waxes sometimes used in edibles or dabbed as concentrates, “than the flower heads.”

A study of pesticide use on cannabis crops in Oregon found a similar problem. A survey of samples off of store shelves in Washington state found five out of six to be contaminated, including with “potentially neurotoxic and carcinogenic agents.” Many samples “harbored multiple contaminants,” attaining levels that were basically off the chart, including 24 distinct pesticide agents, insecticides, and fungicides, and none of them is approved for use on cannabis. But it isn’t their fault. The EPA hasn’t approved any because cannabis is still a federally illegal crop. In fact, testing labs in California have “become hesitant to publicize their service or list agents for which they could assay [test], as they suspected that such information” might just be used as an instruction manual of sorts by “unscrupulous growers to seek out possibly more toxic agents.”

So just regulate it then. That’s been tried, but guess what the biggest barrier has been? Surprise, surprise, it has been the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry. “Like the tobacco industry before it, the cannabis industry is attempting to weaken pesticide regulations pertaining to cannabis. Reportedly, the Colorado Department of Agriculture: ‘…initially hoped to limit permissible pesticides to the most nontoxic,’” but this proposal was quashed by industry pushback, just like the tobacco industry has been able to do.

Big Tobacco “has provided a detailed road map” for King Cannabis: “Deny addiction potential, downplay known adverse health effects, create as large a market as possible as quickly as possible, and protect that market through lobbying, campaign contributions, and other advocacy efforts.” Indeed, “bolstered by enormous profits,” the tobacco industry was able to get itself “exempted from every major piece of consumer protection legislation even after the deadly consequences of tobacco were established.” That should be a cautionary tale for us now, given that public health advocates have definitively fewer billions of dollars to work with.

Big Tobacco may not just be providing the roadmap, but waiting in the wings to own the road. “As a result of litigation against the tobacco industry, more than 80 million pages of internal company documents became available….These documents reveal that since at least 1970, despite fervent denials, major multinational tobacco companies,” including Philip Morris, have been scheming, willing, and prepared to enter the legalized marijuana market to become Big Blunt. “Because of the tobacco industry’s demonstrated ability and willingness to modify its products to increase addictiveness, obfuscate information, deceive the public, and use advertising to target vulnerable groups to increase demand, the industry also has the power to dramatically change (and expand) the use of marijuana.”

For more on the link between the tobacco and cannabis industries, check out Will Cannabis Turn Into Big Tobacco?.

from NutritionFacts.org https://ift.tt/OhzJNST
via IFTTT

In a worst-case scenario, how much flaxseed is too much? 

Flaxseed packs “a nutritional punch,” and, as I discuss in my video Should We Be Concerned About the Cyanide from Flaxseed?, the “release of hydrogen cyanide from flaxseed…[is] below toxic lethal dose.” Well, I should hope so!  

Back-of-the-envelope type calculations have led industry-funded scientists to assert that “a person would have to consume 8 cups (i.e., 1 kg) of ground flaxseed to achieve acute cyanide toxicity.” I’d feel better, though, if it were put to the test. 

Researchers tested flaxseeds under “worse case conditions…resulting in higher cyanide levels in [the] blood.” First, they located the flaxseed with the highest level of cyanide-forming compounds they could find. They went to stores and bought 15 different sources of flaxseed. The average level was about 140 milligrams per kilo, which is typical, but they used the one with 220 mg/kg. Second, the researchers used “maximal mechanical destruction”—a heavy-duty 20,000 RPM lab grinder—to release the most cyanide. Third, study participants ate it all at once on an empty stomach, then kept their stomachs empty. And, they were given it raw because cooking can often wipe out all of the cyanide. The recommended daily dose is about one to two tablespoons of ground flaxseed—I recommend one tablespoon in my Daily Dozen checklist—so the researchers decided to go with four and a half tablespoons. What happened? 

The range of cyanide blood levels one might estimate “to be (possibly) associated with first clinical symptoms of intoxication” is 20 to 40 µM, so we want to stay below those. After participants consumed (on an empty stomach) four and a half tablespoons of the highest cyanide-containing, ultraground, raw flaxseeds the researchers could find, the highest individual level rise was just under 14 µM and the average was around 6 µM. 

There has to be some amount of flax that takes you over the limit, though, so the researchers also tested 9 tablespoons and 15 tablespoons. Remember, we start to worry at around 20 to 40 µM. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:09 in my video, with three and a half teaspoons and even seven teaspoons of raw, high-cyanide ground flax at a time on an empty stomach, there was hardly a blip. At 14 teaspoons, which is 4.5 tablespoons, they got that average increase to 6 µM. What about consuming a little over nine tablespoons? That’s more than a half cup at a time, which does start skirting toxicity. And, finally, what about a whole cup? I don’t even know how you’d eat a whole cup at once, but that is too much, putting you in that potentially toxic range for about three hours. So much for the industry’s claim that consuming eight cups at a time is safe. But, even in this worst-case scenario of one cup of raw flaxseeds on an empty stomach at the highest level the researchers could find, that person still didn’t have any clinical symptoms. This is consistent with the fact that there isn’t a single published report of cyanide poisoning after consumption of flaxseeds anywhere in the literature, even from Swedish health spas where they may give up to 12 tablespoons as a “fiber shock.” Usually, high doses are two tablespoons or so three times a day, and that dose would be “safe with respect to possible acute toxicity of cyanide.” 

What about any possible chronic toxicity? The World Health Organization (WHO) has a standard called the provisional maximum tolerable daily intake (PMTDI), which is defined as the amount you can eat safely every day for the rest of your life without risking any adverse health effects, based on the best available data. Often, though, that’s according to rat studies, as it was in this case: When varying doses of cyanide were put in the drinking water of rats for a few months at a certain level, the so-called benchmark dose lower confidence limit, there’s a 10 percent increased incidence of shrinkage of the tail of the epididymis, which is where sperm is stored in the testicles. That happens at the human equivalent of the amount of cyanide in about 150 tablespoons of flaxseeds a day. Wanting to err on the side of caution, the WHO introduced “a 100-fold uncertainty factor” to create the PMTDI. Instead of 150 tablespoons of flaxseeds a day, the average American should stick to less than one and a half daily tablespoons if you’re going to eat flaxseeds every day. My tablespoon-a-day Daily Dozen recommendation should be safe by any of these standards. 

Cooking may not always wipe out all of the cyanide in flaxseeds. Friday Favorites: How Well Does Cooking Destroy the Cyanide in Flaxseeds and Should We Be Concerned About It? See my video to find out. 

from NutritionFacts.org https://ift.tt/PQR5p3O
via IFTTT

My Daily Dozen recommends at least one tablespoon of ground flaxseeds a day, but what’s this about cyanide? 

Sweden’s dietary guidelines are pioneering in many ways. For example, they encourage people to decrease their climate impact by choosing more plant-based foods, which tend to produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions, which “is why it’s important for us to cut back on meat…” I was surprised by a page on the official Swedish National Food Agency website, though, which discusses cyanogenic glycosides and hydrogen cyanide and recommends for people to “refrain[] from eating” ground flaxseed for fear of cyanide toxicity—as in the ground flaxseeds I encourage everyone to eat every day. No surprise that this was the first question I was asked when I gave a presentation in Stockholm! 

Was the Swedish government onto something? Had I been duped by Big Flax-funded researchers who claimed you could eat pounds—more than 150 tablespoons—of ground flaxseeds every day without worrying? First, some background. 

As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: How Well Does Cooking Destroy the Cyanide in Flaxseeds?, as many as one in five plants that we eat produces cyanide. In fact, if you look at the major food crops in the world (shown in the table below and at 1:07 in my video), more than half are “cyanogenic,” meaning cyanide-producing. But, unlike toxic elements like lead, mercury, or arsenic that can’t be broken down into anything, cyanide is an organic molecule—one carbon atom attached to one nitrogen atom. In this organic state, it can definitely be toxic, but it loses its toxicity once it’s broken down or complexed to something else, and we have a cyanide-detoxifying enzyme in our body that does just that. That’s just one of five main ways our body can detoxify cyanide. It does require protein to do it, though, so that’s why there has been chronic cyanide toxicity among malnourished populations in Africa trying to live off of improperly processed cassava root, for example. But, as long as we’re getting adequate protein in our diet, our body can detoxify the normal amounts of cyanide we eat every day. 

There is a rare, congenital genetic condition called Leber’s disease, though, where you’re born without the ability to detoxify cyanide. Theoretically, “people with the potential for Leber’s disease can go blind” from drinking apple cider, for instance, “because of the effects of cyanide in cider,” but other than that, our bodies evolved to be cyanide-detoxifying machines. Of course, there’s a limit. For example, there was a case of cyanide poisoning after ingestion of bitter almonds. Not regular almonds, which produce about 40 times less cyanide, but bitter almonds, which you can’t even buy. (They’re used in flavor manufacturing.) If you did manage to get some, eating 50 of them could kill you, or even just a handful for a small child. This suggests that eating 2,000 regular almonds at one sitting could also be bad news. 

Although you can’t buy bitter almonds, you can buy apricots and apricot kernels, which are the seeds inside the stone. They actually have pretty toxic levels and have been implicated in cases of severe cyanide poisoning all linked to “Laetrile: the cult of cyanide, promoting poison for profit” scam that you may recall I talked about in my Do Apricot Seeds Work as an Alternative Cancer Cure? video, so I’m totally sympathetic to regulators wanting to take a precautionary approach. But, are flaxseeds like bitter almonds, where just a few ounces could kill you, or are they more like regular almonds, where regular dietary intake wouldn’t even come close? 

Although the fact that flaxseeds can produce cyanide sounds like it would be a significant health concern, “it is not for several reasons,” according to scientists funded by the flax industry. First, an adult human has the ability to detoxify up to 100 mg of cyanide per day. That’s where the “pounds of flaxseeds a day are safe” number came from. And if you wanted to consume even more than those totally unrealistic 150 tablespoons a day, you could just eat them in baked goods since cooking destroys the cyanide. What’s more, eating seven or eight tablespoons of raw flaxseeds doesn’t even bump up the level of urinary thiocyanate, which is an indicator of cyanide exposure. So, it doesn’t even look like your body is exposed to it. “Thus, the toxicity of flaxseed from CGs [cyanogenic glycosides] is not a realistic health threat.”  

Let’s unpack that. The cooking part is mostly true. Baking muffins with just a quarter cup or so of ground flax for 15 to 18 minutes at about 450 degrees Fahrenheit eliminates the cyanide-forming compounds. The same appears to happen with baked bread, but, if you bake ground flaxseeds on their own, only 20 percent of the compounds are wiped out in even an hour at 350 degrees. Baking them whole wipes out 80 percent, though, and baking them in bread or muffins eliminates 100 percent. How does that make any sense? It’s the moisture. Heat plus water wipes out the cyanide. It can be eliminated by boiling for just five minutes, when making hot cereal, for instance. So, yes, in most cases, it’s true that cooking eliminates the cyanide compounds in flax, because they are typically in a batter as an egg substitute or in a moist dough when baking crackers, for example. In those cases, the cyanide is gone upon cooking. But, you can’t just spread ground flaxseeds on a baking sheet because they dry out so fast that only a minority of the cyanide is lost. Why does it matter, though, if your body doesn’t even seem to notice seven or eight tablespoons of them when they’re raw? Because your body does notice. Urinary thiocyanate excretion doubled at that level, though that’s just a sign your body is actively detoxifying it. And if we can detoxify a kilo’s worth of flax a day, what’s the problem? 

Even if the “adult human body has the ability to detoxify ≤100 mg cyanide/day,” kids eat flax, too. Furthermore, as you can see below and at 5:47 in my video, a kilo has about 50 percent more than the 100 mg we could detoxify and I’m not interested in how much we can detoxify “up to.” For safety, we should be interested in the worst-case scenario, not the best-case scenario. Would someone please just give study participants different doses of flaxseeds and measure how much cyanide ends up in their blood? They did, and I cover that study in my video Friday Favorites: Should We Be Concerned About the Cyanide in Flaxseeds?. 

So, Friday Favorites: How Well Does Cooking Destroy the Cyanide in Flaxseeds and Should We Be Concerned About It? Watch the thrilling conclusion. 

I mentioned my Daily Dozen Checklist, which includes my recommendation for at least one tablespoon of ground flaxseed a day. Check it out to learn more. 

from NutritionFacts.org https://ift.tt/RECLtJe
via IFTTT