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Legal Marijuana Grow Operations and Unique Occupational Exposure Risks

The industrial hygiene and indoor air quality professionals at Clark Seif Clark provide testing and monitoring services to identify exposure hazards.


Chatsworth, CA – WEBWIRE

To help protect workers and keep companies in regulatory compliance, Clark Seif Clark offers testing, monitoring and consulting services to identify and mitigate these and other potential exposure hazards workers may encounter in the legal marijuana industry.

With marijuana being legal in one form or another in approximately 30 states, legal marijuana grow operations (MGOs) and extraction facilities are becoming big business in many parts of the country. Just this past April, The New York Times published an article entitled, “Marijuana Goes Industrial in California.” The article discussed large-scale greenhouse farming of marijuana in the Salinas Valley, an area often referred to as the salad bowl of the nation.
 
With large and small scale MGOs sprouting up in states from coast-to-coast, this multibillion dollar industry already employees thousands of workers. If growth projections are accurate, the industry will likely employee hundreds of thousands in just a few more years. 
 
A large percentage of MGOs are housed in indoor facilities. These greenhouses and buildings can pose unique occupational health and safety risks. The warm and humid conditions utilized in many grow operations can support the growth of mold. Inhalation exposure to elevated levels of mold can cause allergies, act as a respiratory irritant, trigger an asthma attack in some people with the condition, and some types of mold can even cause opportunistic infections in people with a weakened or suppressed immune system. Exposure to other potential allergens, dust, particulate matter (PM), fertilizers and pesticides associated with these types of operations are additional concerns.
 
“Clandestine marijuana grow-ups often severely damage structures and present a wide variety of health risks because of their illicit nature. Commercial MGOs can also have negative consequences for building infrastructure and employees,” said Derrick A. Denis at V.P. of IEQ at Clark Seif Clark (CSC). “Crop yield is of primary concern for MGO designers and operators, but sanctioned MGOs must comply with federal, state and local environmental health and safety (EH&S) laws. MGOs must deal with a diversity of environmental hurdles. These include, but are not limited to, monitoring elevated humidity, managing liquid water’s impact on structural materials, controlling and monitoring the injection of carbon dioxide (CO2), managing mold growth on site surfaces and product, applying fertilizers and pesticides, controlling particulate matter, managing solvents used in extraction procedures, dealing with employee occupancy in spaces with reduced ventilation rates, and other issues. Individually or in any combination, these EH&S hurdles result in a buildup of airborne or surface pollutants that can degrade the indoor air quality to concentrations of concern for workers.”
 
To help protect workers and keep companies in regulatory compliance, Clark Seif Clark offers testing, monitoring and consulting services to identify and mitigate these and other potential exposure hazards workers may encounter in the legal marijuana industry.  CSC also recently sponsored an educational video about MGOs and potential occupational exposure risks that can be seen at: https://youtu.be/Yu2fwz298C8
 
To learn more about this or other occupational, environmental, indoor air quality, health and safety testing services, please visit www.csceng.com, email csc@csceng.com or call (800) 807-1118. 
 
About Clark Seif Clark
CSC was established in 1989 to help clients in both public and private sectors address indoor air quality, occupational, environmental, and health and safety (EH&S) issues. CSC is a leading provider of these services with multiple offices along the western seaboard and southwest. The company believes in science-based protocols and has a strong background in engineering, making them the preferred environmental consultants to industrial clients, healthcare facilities, architects, schools, builders, contractors, developers and real estate professionals.
 


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 Marijuana
 MGOs
 Industrial Hygiene
 EHS
 Occupational Health


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