Laboratory Best Practices

In light of recent headlines concerning cannabis laboratories throughout the country, Cannabis Science and Technology reached out to Douglas Duncan, Laboratory Director of Kairos Labs in Detroit, MI and member of our Editorial Advisory Board for more information. In this interview, Duncan shares his perspectives on lab shopping, major challenges in the industry today, and innovations in cannabis testing laboratories for the future. He also shares insights into consumer practices and the potential effects of a federal rescheduling of cannabis.

The first part of this column examines the fractured nature of state-based regulations and compares it with the federal limits for pharmaceutical products and dietary supplements.

Let’s take a look at the most recent webinars on cannabis research and medicine to catch up on industry trends and innovations.

The latest webinar from the GMP Collective discussed the practice of lab shopping and the various causes, effects, and potential solutions.

This month’s webinar covered the many facets of fit for purpose testing of cannabis products.

A look at the advocacy and guidance conducted by the ACIL within the cannabis industry.

This article explains four key areas growers should focus on to mitigate the need for excessive remediation.

On January 31, 2024, the GMP Collective presented the seventeenth episode in their ongoing webinar series, When Things Go Wrong.

The big four heavy metals required by the majority of states is totally inadequate, but how many are actually worthy of consideration? Here, Rob Thomas takes a look at the other metals and how ICP-MS can be used.

Leading up to the virtual symposium, “Microbial Testing in Cannabis: Basics, Guidance, and Applications,” Cannabis Science and Technology held a poll on its LinkedIn page, offering viewers the chance to ask a question for panelists to answer during the presentation.

A panel of individuals from standards-setting organizations and accreditation bodies reviewed the role they each play within the cannabis sector and offered insights into the future of the industry to close out the analytical science track at Cannabis Science Conference Fall on Friday, September 22nd.

As the industry continues to scale, more cannabis plants are being cultivated and processed than ever before to meet corresponding product demand, which in turn highlights the paramount role that GxP plays in ensuring the quality, safety, and efficacy of cannabis products.

In April 2023, two cannabis testing laboratories launched a certification program to promote higher standards for cannabis testing laboratories across the country.

This tutorial article outlines the key considerations that must be put in place when setting up a cannabis extraction facility.

Here we continue the discussion of energy and elements used in atomic spectroscopy by looking at one of the most commonly used analytical techniques in the elemental analytical laboratory—inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES).

This article addresses the US Department of Agriculture’s hemp testing rules and what laboratories should know regarding hemp testing. The author provides a short tutorial for laboratories and includes a section how laboratory information management systems (LIMS) can help.

The final part in this series of pitfalls to avoid and practicalities covers the importance of cleanliness, how many standards to run, how to spot outliers, and important experimental variables to control.

Dr. Anthony Macherone of Agilent Technologies discusses what he hopes to see change in the future regarding cannabis regulations and testing guidelines.

The third part in this series of pitfalls to avoid and practicalities to know about discusses the importance of validating and checking your calibration to ensure quality.

Part II of this series discusses how to measure absorbances properly, and compares the use of peak heights and peak areas in creating calibrations.

Here we discuss the importance of using standards that bracket the expected concentration range of standards in the unknowns, using the same chemical components in standards and unknowns, and making sure to minimize the error in concentration measurements of standards.

Cannabis testing laboratories play an important role in ensuring consumer safety and quality throughout the industry. These laboratories face many challenges—from the variety of samples in the industry to changing regulations and testing requirements and everything in between. In this interview, Sarah Ahrens, Founder and CEO of True Labs for Cannabis LLC, explains her philosophy and approach behind building her cannabis analytical testing laboratory in New Jersey. She also covers current developments in the cannabis testing industry and what needs to be done to ensure it has a transparent and productive future that benefits producers and consumers alike.

Part III discusses more on Beer’s Law and why absorptivity is important along with some of its advantages and limitations.

In this article, regulatory requirements are explored as they are meant to create confidence that cannabis and cannabis-infused products are safe to use.

In part II of this series, we establish the physical basis of Beer’s Law and derive it from first principles then wrap up with a discussion of how the assumptions made in the derivation affect Beer’s Law experiments.

In this introduction to Beer’s Law, we review its use, history, and begin to cover the theory behind the equation.

A discussion on the selection of a “golden” potency method including what this method should look like, how we should go about choosing it, and more.

How does the pharmaceutical industry test better to avoid mislabeling problems?

An issue always at the forefront of the cannabis industry is testing accuracy. Laboratories all around the world battle with analytic discrepancies when testing their samples. In this interview, Mark Lewis Founder of Napro Research, discusses his cannabis analysis findings and why education on the plant is so important for the industry to move forward.

In part I of this series on statistical concepts related to cannabis analysis, we introduce the normal distribution, standard deviation, and how to calculate precision and accuracy.