Recent applications of chromatography for analysis of contaminants in cannabis products: a review

Abstract

In the last few years, the cultivation of cannabis has been increasing due to greater use in foods, recreational use, creams, oils, and other applications. Thus, analysis of contaminants (e.g. pesticides and mycotoxins) in cannabis products is necessary to ensure consumer safety. This review is focused on the analytical procedures, based on chromatographic techniques, used for the determination of contaminants in cannabis and related products, developed from 2015 to 2020. QuEChERS (acronym of quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe) was mainly used for the extraction of pesticides and other contaminants from cannabis because its versatility and capacity to extract a wide range of substances, and therefore, increasing the scope of the analysis. The most employed technique to determine pesticides and mycotoxins in cannabis products was liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS), although gas chromatography (GC) coupled to MS was also employed for the analysis of non-polar compounds, using triple quadrupole (QqQ) as mass analyzer. Nevertheless, new advances in cannabis analysis are also discussed, introducing techniques such as high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), which allows for performing both targeted and untargeted (unknown and suspect) analyses.

Diseases of Cannabis sativa Caused by Diverse Fusarium Species

“…For fiber hemp, seed treatment with conventional fungicides reduced incidence of damping-off caused by F. solani (Mishra, 1987). Pesticide residues are particularly important in C. sativa grown for medical purposes, but the low number of products approved for disease control, the continued use of control methods that evolved when the plant was illegal, and the lack of scrutiny normally provided by the food and drug approval process (Seltenrich, 2019;Pinkhasova et al, 2021) have resulted in illegal pesticide residues being commonly found in Cannabis products (Narváez et al, 2020;López-Ruiz et al, 2021). Health Canada maintains a nationwide program that couples unannounced inspections and targeted testing to monitor pesticide use and reduce the potential risk to public health (Health Canada, 2019), whereas in the USA, residues are regulated on a state-by-state basis.…”

Modeling a pesticide remediation strategy for preparative liquid chromatography using high-performance liquid chromatography

“…Cannabis is a hyperaccumulator; therefore, trace contamination of biomass is an issue when grown next to other crops (McPartland and McKernan 2017 ; Wu et al 2021 ). For example, hemp grown in proximity to other commodity crops can be contaminated by pesticides from those adjacent fields (López-Ruiz et al 2022 ). This becomes problematic when the pesticides used are not accepted by commercial cannabis regulations and drift to the hemp crop.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to develop a benchtop-scale HPLC method for separating 11 pesticides and 26 cannabinoids, and evaluate the theoretical suitability of the method for separating pesticides and cannabinoids from six industrial hemp processing matrices using preparative-scale liquid chromatography (PLC). Methods for both cannabinoid and pesticide quantitation have been reported using HPLC, but targeted pesticide separation and assay for scale-up to PLC has not been reported (Craven et al 2019 ; Atapattu and Johnson 2020 ; López-Ruiz et al 2022 ). Using a benchtop-scale HPLC adds an element of novelty to this work by incorporating principles of green chemistry for developing preparative-scale liquid chromatography methods of interest to the broader industrial community.…”

Does Cannabis Extract Obtained From Cannabis Flowers With Maximum Allowed Residual Level of Aflatoxins and Ochratoxin a Have an Impact on Human Safety and Health?

“…Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether the cannabis extract obtained from cannabis flowers that contain the maximum allowed level of mycotoxins affects human safety and health. There are many recently published manuscripts related to quantification techniques for the determination of mycotoxins in cannabis flower and cannabis extracts, inapplicable for the equipment we used ( 21 , 22 ). For that reason, a novel LC/MS/MS method was developed and validated for the determination of aflatoxins and OchA in cannabis extracts to demonstrate that this analytical method is suitable for the intended experimental design, thus, achieving the set goal.…”