Some marijuana users may have elevated levels of lead and cadmium — two heavy metals linked to long-term health issues — in their blood and urine, a new study shows.
Among a group of more than 7,200 adults, the 358 who reported using marijuana within the past 30 days were found to have 27% higher blood lead levels than those who said they didn’t use either marijuana or tobacco.
The marijuana users also had 22% higher levels of cadmium in their blood, according to the research, which was published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Urine samples showed similar results.
The researchers, a team at Columbia University, knew going in that cannabis plants can absorb heavy metals from soil and, in fact, are particularly good at doing so. The contaminants travel through the stalk of the plant into the leaves and flowers.
But the new findings demonstrate that heavy metals in cannabis plants can also wind up in the human body.
So does that mean we could use hemp as a fiber replacement in places with contaminated soil?
Yes.
It’s called phytoremediation. Hemp is an insanely cool plant. The issues with phytoremediation are:
time consuming; you got to wait for the plants to grow
generally only a few metals are taken up by a given spp., so application is limited and depends on metals present and plants growing conditions and the metals they uptake intersecting
you then have to harvest the plants and dispose of them in a landfill, which means you have to truck them.
Generally, during soil remediation projects they just excavate the soil and landfill it. They then bring in clean soil or use organic amendments to improve the subsoil horizons to the point they can support plants
Why would you need to send it to a landfill, and release the chemicals there as the plant decays, when you could just make stuff out of it.
Because the chemicals and metals are not biostable, and you would be creating further contamination pathways.
Landfills are designed to not release anything into the environment.
That may or may not happen in reality, but there is an attempt.
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