The Ol' Moldy Trim into BHO Question

[vapeman24]

Hey gentleman,

A friend of mine asked if I could process some trim for him. Unfortunately upon going through it I found some grey mold in the larger nugs. It seems almost powdery. I do not grow so I am not familiar with the type of mold, so I was hoping someone might be able to identify it by the pictures.

The rest of the trimmings were fine. I told him I would have no problem running it as long as I could find out if it's safe.

Would separating the moldy buds from the rest of the trim be safe, or would the whole batch be ruined?

 

[Gray Wolf]

A microscope will tell you how wide spread the mold is and what it is.

Botrytis and Powdery Mildew filaments and spores can be removed by filtration to 0.2 microns, but Aspergillus leaves behind aflatoxins.

 

[vapeman24]

A microscope will tell you how wide spread the mold is and what it is.

Botrytis and Powdery Mildew filaments and spores can be removed by filtration to 0.2 microns, but Aspergillus leaves behind aflatoxins.

Thanks for the quick response as always Gray Wolf.

Could winterizing with Everclear be a way of removing any filaments and spores?

 

[ydijadoit]

Just went through this myself, to the tune of 2lbs of top shelf buds. Throw it out. Not because I did, it's just the right thing to do.
Short of a lab analysis, how do you know which strain of yuk is growing in that stuff?
All the reading I did, indicated alcohol will not kill mold spores effectively. Butane might...? Maybe?
I feel your pain, believe me.
Chuck it.
Clear conscience, and not risking your own health, either!
Regards.

 

[vapeman24]

Would these be applicable at all?

Ethanol Production
Aflatoxins do not appear in distilled alcohol, even when
the corn has relatively high levels of toxin. The toxins are
not degraded during fermentation and distillation but
simply are concentrated in the spent grain. Thus, ethanol
plants can utilize aflatoxin-contaminated corn, although
they may prefer not to, because of a desire to use the spent
grain as livestock feed.

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/id/id59/id59.pdf

Alcohol. Aflatoxin contaminated corn could be utilized to produce alcohol for the production of gasohol. In fact, some has been utilized in this process. However, the residue from such a process remains contaminated with aflatoxins and should not be fed to livestock unless it is decontaminated. Apparently, the aflatoxins do not interfere with the fermentation process in producing alcohol.

http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/NCH/NCH-52.html

 

[ydijadoit]

That's one of the documents I ran into, while frantically seeking a solution to my own problem, a couple weeks ago.
It's funny, we both zeroed in on the same exact lines. I realized that, for me, the more I read about this stuff, the less I knew.
Combined with a very strong desire NOT to chuck a bunch of A+ bud, I soaked mine in bleach, and got rid of it to the dumpster, fast, before I could talk myself out of it.
For what it's worth, those picture look a thousand times worse than what I threw away.
I had two golf-ball sized nugs, that showed visible mold, with the naked eye. Once I broke out the magnifier, at 60x, I could find spidery hairs in all the colas, deep inside, even 5 feet away, in a different area..
No matter how you go about things, I'd surely recommend washing everything you have touched with that stuff, with a good bleach solution, before it spreads.
Regards

 

[vapeman24]

That's one of the documents I ran into, while frantically seeking a solution to my own problem, a couple weeks ago.
It's funny, we both zeroed in on the same exact lines. I realized that, for me, the more I read about this stuff, the less I knew.
Combined with a very strong desire NOT to chuck a bunch of A+ bud, I soaked mine in bleach, and got rid of it to the dumpster, fast, before I could talk myself out of it.
For what it's worth, those picture look a thousand times worse than what I threw away.
I had two golf-ball sized nugs, that showed visible mold, with the naked eye. Once I broke out the magnifier, at 60x, I could find spidery hairs in all the colas, deep inside, even 5 feet away, in a different area..
No matter how you go about things, I'd surely recommend washing everything you have touched with that stuff, with a good bleach solution, before it spreads.
Regards

Yeah I had a feeling it probably couldn't be salvaged. It's a shame it's some pretty good trim, probably 11%-12% and smells fantastic.

 

[vapeman24]

Did you see this one as well?

Go to page 15 of the PDF, or Page 345 of the source material, and look for "Removal by Extraction"
http://pac.iupac.org/publications/pac/pdf/1970/pdf/2103x0331.pdf

I'm not smart enough yet to understand most of it haha

And on Page 21 of the PDF, or Page 351 of the source material, it states:

Extraction with certain solvents to achieve essentially complete removal of aflatoxins is also technically feasible.

 

[ydijadoit]

Hmmm, I could say I read it, but that just means I looked at the words, and nodded to myself, pretending to understand it...
That kind of stuff is above my grade level, for the most part!
Take care!

 

[vapeman24]

Hmmm, I could say I read it, but that just means I looked at the words, and nodded to myself, pretending to understand it...
That kind of stuff is above my grade level, for the most part!
Take care!

Haha I am in the same boat. I posted my question on a chemistry forum so hopefully someone over there can assist as well.

 

[ydijadoit]

That's good thinking. I crosscheck a lot of stuff on here, using the same method. There is so much good info on this site, and a hell of a lot of "Bro logic" also.
"Oh, dude. Bro, what you need to do is this, man....."
If Gray Wolf gets home from work, and refutes every point I posted here, my words will also land in the "Bro logic" shame locker!
This is one of the worst things about cannabis being illegal, as I see it. I care about the stuff I produce, and more importantly, the small group of people who smoke it. Obviously, you do as well, as do the majority of members.
The problem is, with sooo many years of not only prohibition, but downright lies and disinformation, we are left with too many unknowns.
-Is it safe to grow hydro in plastic totes?
-What is the safe limit of mold in our product?
-Is unflushed bud actually full of toxic fertilizer residue?
There's a million more like that, that I have yet to see definitive proof of.
All we can do, is what we can live with in the mirror, for now.
Regards

 

[vapeman24]

That's good thinking. I crosscheck a lot of stuff on here, using the same method. There is so much good info on this site, and a hell of a lot of "Bro logic" also.
"Oh, dude. Bro, what you need to do is this, man....."
If Gray Wolf gets home from work, and refutes every point I posted here, my words will also land in the "Bro logic" shame locker!
This is one of the worst things about cannabis being illegal, as I see it. I care about the stuff I produce, and more importantly, the small group of people who smoke it. Obviously, you do as well, as do the majority of members.
The problem is, with sooo many years of not only prohibition, but downright lies and disinformation, we are left with too many unknowns.
-Is it safe to grow hydro in plastic totes?
-What is the safe limit of mold in our product?
-Is unflushed bud actually full of toxic fertilizer residue?
There's a million more like that, that I have yet to see definitive proof of.
All we can do, is what we can live with in the mirror, for now.
Regards

It's good to see other people with your same mentality. I feel exactly the same. It's nice to see the game evolving, but we are still a very long way from understanding everything. Eventually we are going to have to step back and let the guys with lab coats and PhD's do the scientific grunt work to back up all of our "bro science".

 

[vapeman24]

Commercial processing of cottonseed requires hexane to extract and recover edible oil. Gossypol and aflatoxin are not removed from extracted meals. A bench-top extraction process with 95% (vol/vol) aqueous ethanol (EtOH) solvent has been developed that extracts all three of the above materials with a much less volatile solvent. In this process, cottonseed is pretreated and extracted with ambient 95% EtOH to remove gossypol and then extracted with hot 95% EtOH to extract oil and aflatoxin. Membranes and adsorption columns are used to purify the various extract streams, so that they can be recycled directly. A representative extracted meal contained a total gossypol content of 0.47% (a 70% reduction) and 3 ppb aflatoxin (a 95% reduction). Residual oil content was approximately 2%.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02540523

 

[ydijadoit]

Haha, yes. That's good stuff, but all I can picture is Jesse, and Walter, standing in the lab. Unfortunately, I am Jesse, in about season 1....
Chili P!

 

[noytered]

Not sure if you know, but you can actually grow "proper weed" that is not moldy and can be used to make extracts with no worry.

(This is sarcasm, I hate when people use moldy cannabis for anything other then trash / quarantine.)

 

[vapeman24]

Not sure if you know, but you can actually grow "proper weed" that is not moldy and can be used to make extracts with no worry.

(This is sarcasm, I hate when people use moldy cannabis for anything other then trash / quarantine.)

As clearly stated in my original post this is for a friend. There is absolutely zero reason to waste it if you can safely extract it. I said I would only do it if it was safe. I would also remove all the visible mold and only what looks safe. I obviousky know this doesn't remove everything, but I will try to minimize the risks as much as possible.

Reading through many journals involving aflatoxins in corn and other grains, we are already regulated to have a certain amount of aflatoxins in our food by the FDA. If I can safely winterize the BHO with ethanol/everclear and remove 98%+ of the aflatoxins, why wouldn't I do so?

I understand why you would be frustrated seeing this question so many times, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to learn if there is a possible way to safely extract from moldy trim.

If there is even a shred of doubt that I can't remove most (98%+) of the aflatoxins, it will be trashed. Until I know for sure though, I am not going to do anything with it.

 

[noytered]

I have heard it ALL a million times in MANY MANY posts about moldy bud.

Basically use the search function next time. Also never use moldy bud for anything, grow good stuff and store it right.

 

[vapeman24]

Great. Could you link me to a thread where it gives a scientific reason why ethanol/everclear will not remove aflatoxins? I found a bunch of bro science, but nothing that definitely proves it cannot be done.

 

[vapeman24]

I keep re-looking through old threads and see great stuff like different boiling points for the aflatoxins, and I know they cant be FILTERED out, but I can't find anything that definitively proves ethanol won't eradicate most of the aflatoxins. I hope you can respect the fact I wont just accept hearsay, I need to see some type of data to prove WHY it will/won't remove the aflatoxins.

 

[vapeman24]

This is the response from an organic chemist regarding my question of whether aflatoxins will extirpate in ethanol:

Cold ethanol may very well extract them, then obviously do not appear in any distillate.*
Cold water as well, and some of them exhibit transdermal properties, very nasty compounds