Cannabis Extraction Solvent Safety

INTRODUCTION

On January 12th 2024, this page was presented as a talk and slideshow to EduCannation members for a look at solvent safety in the home. This has been edited down for GrayWolfs Lair to just focus on the metabolism of solvents and what that means in the real world. A slideshow is available via this link if you'd like to peruse it for the hotlinks to the references. There are author notes at the bottom of each slide via a pull-up handlebar. 

Right upfront, I need to say, I am not a medical doctor, nor medical professional, just an avid cannabis enthusiast. Nothing you hear in this presentation should be taken as medical advice. My presentation today is a review of solvents at the residual trace level by reviewing existing government regulations, medical studies, the body's metabolism of solvents and chemical properties of solvents.

Solvent Wars

Today, we will look at how to safely make cannabis oil at home, but first must address the elephant in the room. There is a debate in the consumer world around which solvents are appropriate for home extraction. This debate pits Ethanol against Isopropyl Alcohol with claims that the former is harmless because you can drink it, and the latter, Isopropyl Alcohol, is poisonous in any quantity.

A claim that Ethanol is safe because it has a Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) rating, ignores the fact that Isopropyl and Acetone also have a Conditional GRAS rating for presence in certain food additives. Here’s the reality - Ethanol metabolizes into a known carcinogenic that may damage the body with every drink. This damage comes in very small amounts that accumulate into long term adverse health issues such as Cirrhosis of the Liver, Fatty Liver Disease, cancer, birth defects, and DNA damage. These are real consequences the general public ignores for the momentary pleasurable effects of intoxication. The World Health Organization has published a paper “No amount of alcohol is safe for consumption”.

Turning to Isopropyl, the problem with arguments against IPA, these are always centered on drinking quantities. Those making that argument are missing the most obvious fact - you will never encounter drinking quantities of any solvent when ingesting oil concentrates. As we will see graphically, this is physically impossible. Some medical patients may ingest up to a gram of oil per day with residual traces a mere fraction of that weight. As we will see, government regulations have set daily exposure limits for every solvent.

Consumers in general are completely naive regarding the governing regulations on residual solvents. Decades ago, the FDA published Permitted Daily Exposure (PDE) values of each solvent. It comes as a complete surprise that Acetone actually has a higher PDE value than Ethanol. This hints at a completely different narrative than what consumers have come to believe. A vast majority of consumers never depart from childhood learning where our parents tell us ‘Don’t Drink that, it’s poison!’. That served us well as children, but as adults having access to a world of information at our fingertips, we can easily find the truth about how residual solvents affect our bodies. 

The reality is, you should never drink solvents, except of course water, which is the most polar solvent on earth. This presentation takes the reader to a deeper level of understanding around solvents with the use of illustrations to drive the point home - residual traces that fall under the FDA’s Permitted Daily Exposure values are harmless, even for popular Ethanol that is the most damaging of the four solvents.

METABOLISM OF SOLVENTS

The first thing we want to do is review the body’s metabolism of the solvents. Of the four solvents discussed today, these form two groups based upon the body’s metabolism. Ethanol and Ethyl Acetate form one group, with Isopropyl and Acetone forming the second. It is crucial to understand how these two solvent groups are processed by the human body.

First, lets look at Ethanol. Ethanol is broken down by the liver and kidneys into a known carcinogen called Acetaldehyde.

Acetaldehyde is considered a reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radical species, which is why it damages cells leading to long term health effects. It takes moderate to heavy drinking to accumulate enough damage to lead to serious long term health effects. Short term ill effects are hangovers and facial flushing.

Here is what Claude.AI says about it:

Acetaldehyde is considered a reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radical species due to its unpaired electron structure. The term used to describe this chemical property of acetaldehyde is that it is a "reactive electrophilic compound" or "electrophilic species".

Some key points about acetaldehyde's electrophilic nature:

• It contains a carbonyl carbon that is electron-deficient and reactive towards nucleophiles like proteins and DNA.

• This electrophilic reactivity allows acetaldehyde to form adducts with cellular macromolecules, potentially leading to oxidative stress and damage.

• The free radical-like properties stem from acetaldehyde's tendency to extract electrons from surrounding biomolecules during redox reactions.

• Excess acetaldehyde generation overwhelms endogenous antioxidant defenses against electrophilic/ROS attacks.

• This lectrophilic and pro-oxidant character is a key mechanism underlying acetaldehyde's cytotoxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic effects.

So in summary, the appropriate term highlighting acetaldehyde's free radical activity and electron-deficient reactivity towards biomolecules is categorizing it as an "electrophilic species" or "reactive electrophilic compound."

Now lets look at the second group which is includes Isopropyl Alcohol and Acetone. As you can see in the slide below, Isopropyl breaks down into Acetone, the simplest ketone. Acetone is not broken down any further. 

Acetone is actually generated by the liver when metabolizing fats and is used as an alternate energy source during low blood sugar levels. The sweet breath diabetics experience in low blood sugar states is excess acetone being expelled via the lungs. This is why service dogs can alert their patient to a low blood sugar state.

Best news is, with 100 years of world-wide medical and chemistry knowledge, Acetone and Isopropyl have never been found to be genotoxic, carcinogenic or teragenic, ie, does not damage DNA, nor cause cancer or birth defects.

One argument against Acetone and Isopropyl, is that both do not carry the FDA's GRAS rating. Turns out, yes they do, but with a limited scope of being used in preparing certain food ingredients. So, less general, more specific in what I called a ‘Conditional GRAS’ approval rating. In the previous talk, I described this as a 'Semi-GRAS' rating. 

UNDERSTANDING DRINKING VS TRACE QUANTITIES

Next, we're going to look closely at trace quantities. The FDA has published a number everyone concerned about solvents needs to understand. This number is called the 'Permitted Daily Exposure' (PDE). It is essentially a line drawn in the sand where harmless traces cross over into levels of potentially adverse effects. This number is a product of a larger calculation taking into consideration multiple factors.

In the table below are the relevant chemical properties of the solvents. I am highlighting two columns showing the FDA’s Permitted Daily Exposure (PDE) values. 

In the left column, the numbers are per kilogram of body weight, per day. The right hand column is the value multiplied out for a 105lbs person. As you can see, Acetone actually has a higher PDE than Ethanol.

This is significant because Acetone in trace amounts is being recognized as being less harmful than Ethanol. Of course, just like stomach acid, larger volumes take on harsher characteristics.  Higher production means it can dissolve more, but the higher volume may spill over causing ulcers. Same with Isopropyl and Acetone where higher volumes cause gastric distress. At drinking volumes, Isopropyl will get you more inebriated than Ethanol with much more discomfort and pain. Every health clinic around the world has an Alcohol Overdose protocol that includes Isopropyl because this is a world wide problem. 

Ethanol, Isopropyl and Acetone in 90+ concentration are not for drinking. These are solvents sharing very similar molecular structure and similar chemical characteristics. If you drink it, it will hurt you. Did you know Acetone, sold as finger nail polish remover, is sold with a bittering agent to keep you from drinking it? No need for a bittering agent in Isopropyl because in volume, its a real punch in the gut. Both Acetone and Isopropyl toxicity will make you miserable. Ethanol plays the game differently by being both toxic (toxic effects include central nervous system depression) and then metabolizing into a carcinogen that leads to long term adverse health effects. 

Back to measuring residual traces, the foundation of the FDA’s PDE number is based upon the chemical property called Limit of Quantification (LOQ). Look familar? This term is commonly used in Cannabis Potency lab tests. LOQ quantities are the smallest amount of the chemical that can be reliably measured thus used as a baseline value in the FDA’s PDE calculation. There’s a lower threshold called Limit of Detection (LOD) but that’s where things get murky. The quantity is so low that detection is unreliable, something like: Did you see it? No, oh wait, there it is. Ah its gone..

In this illustration, you can see down at the bottom of the flask, Acetone's PDE is a dividing line between trace quantities and drinking quantities for Acetone. The illustration takes this all the way up to show the estimated Lethal Dose for each solvent.

Acetone has more harmful qualities in volume compared to Ethanol, leading to a smaller quantity needed for Lethal Dose (LD50) compared to Ethanol. True for Isopropyl as well. The least harmful solvent in drinking quantities is Ethyl-Acetate. To the point, this illustration serves to show how close the three main solvents are in lethal volume.

Looking at the next slide, we'll focus on some real world numbers in cannabis extracts. As long as the residual solvents fall within legal limits, these numbers tell the whole story.  The solvent PDE values are show in light blue, but scaled to show a really big number. Acetone is 9.996g shown as 9,996,000 so you can compare it to the residual solvent limit established by the FDA.

In this slide, a question is posed: If a gummy has 10mg of cannabis concentrate, how much residual solvent is permitted in that 10mg?

Answer – 0.5% of 10mg is 0.05mg. This is the legal limit for residual solvent in a 10mg gummy. As you can see, that is 5 orders of magnitude below each solvent’s PDE.  

So, let me ask. How many 10mg gummies do you have to eat per hour to reach the daily PDE for Ethanol?

A crushing 6584 per hour! Bring a backhoe! It takes 65 grams of cannabis concentrate to hold 1/24th amount of residual solvent. Now multiply that by 24! You would have to eat 1,560 grams of concentrate to reach the full Permitted Daily Exposure of that residual solvent.

Can you see how ludicrous the contentious debate is over using Ethanol vs Isopropyl? It’s laughable that proponents of Ethanol argue you must exclusively use it for safety when it’s the most damaging solvent in the group at the molecular level. No, you can not drink these solvents, but that’s not a valid safety argument. Yes, you can drink diluted Ethanol, but risk cellular damage while enjoying the intoxication.

CONCLUSION

Here we’ve looked at four different solvents commonly found in the home. From a chemistry and biological perspective, these four represent the safest solvents that can be used without requiring special training or lab gear. This data reflects the current knowledge of the world medical community and might change in the future. A lot of the in-vivo solvent testing was on lab animals then extrapolated to human scale. These numbers may change with additional research but very unlikely after all this time.

On the consumer side, due to lack of in-depth understanding of chemistry, consumers believe that ethanol is the safest because it can be ingested. This seemingly logical conclusion permits users to disregard the dangers of long term exposures leading to cirrhosis of the liver, birth defects and DNA damage.

As shown in this discussion, the most feared solvents, acetone and isopropyl, viewed as poison at any level, are actually the least biologically harmful to the human body down at the trace level. By understanding these solvents at the molecular level and following through the metabolic pathways, the picture becomes clear. The most bio-friendly solvent is Acetone, being the least toxic of all four solvents at trace levels. This fact is supported by the FDA establishing higher Permitted Daily Exposures for Acetone versus Ethanol. This is significant because the definition of PDE draws a line in the sand between harmless and harmful levels.

For virtually the entire world, the debate on Ethanol vs Isopropyl safety is actually a mute point because residual traces of these FDA Class 3 solvents are low enough to be safely metabolized by healthy liver and kidneys. Ethanol's metabolite, Acetaldehyde, is broken down by the cell's mitochondria, so it's still damaging at the lowest level but at insignificant rates. When in compliance with regulations, residual solvents in edibles has been shown to be orders of magnitude under the FDA Permitted Daily limits.

Bringing it home:

• Permitted Daily Exposure (PDE) is the dividing line between harmless trace levels and higher levels with potentially adverse effects.

• You are never going to come close to PDE or drinking quantities of solvents by ingesting cannabis concentrate.

• Drinking exposures are often over PDE values. One shot of 80 proof Vodka has 9.4 grams ethanol, more than the PDE for a 105lbs person.

• Traces of solvent in edibles are orders of magnitude below the FDA’s PDE values.

In closing, when permitted by local laws, medical patients at home have good options for solvent selection. Some Chemical-Intolerant health issues might preclude certain solvents based individual sensitivities. Those suffering from impaired liver or kidney function may now choose which solvent best fit their chemical sensitivity. This premise needs to be discussed with medical professionals experts in the field of Toxicology.

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GLOSSARY:

ADI: Acceptable Daily Intake: 

                        The amount of a substance that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without causing harm.

ALD: Alcoholic liver disease

CLD: Chronic liver disease

EC: Endocannabinoid

ECS: Endocannabinoid system

EC50: Effective Concentration 50%

ED50: Effective Dose 50%

LC50: Lethal Concentration 50%

LD50: Lethal Dose 50%

LEL: Lower Explosive Limit

LOAEL: Lowest Adverse Effect Level

MRL: Maximum Residue Limit

NAFLD: Non alcoholic fatty liver disease

NOAEL: No Observed Adverse Effect Level

PDE: Permitted Daily Exposure determined by EPA’s calculation based on LOAEL

PEL: Permitted Exposure Limit of chemicals via OSHA measures airborne contaminates

PNEC: Predicted No Effect Concentration: 

                        The concentration of a substance in the environment that is not expected to cause adverse 

                        effects on aquatic organisms.

PPM: Parts Per Million of one liter

        1.000,000 Liter (1kg), milliliter (1g), milligram (1mg)

PPB: Parts Per Billion of one liter

        1.000,000,000 Liter (1kg), milliliter (1g), milligram (1mg), microgram (1ug)

RfC: An estimate of a continuous inhalation exposure concentration to people

        (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without risk of deleterious

        effects during a lifetime.

RfD: Reference Dose: The amount of a substance that is likely to be without risk

        of adverse health effects over a specified duration of exposure.

UEL: Upper Explosive Limit