Just a thought, as edibles you would decarb. At what temperature does mold bite the big one? Here is me wasting an hour. Well, not a waste.
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Most yeasts and
molds are heat-sensitive and destroyed by heat treatments at
temperatures of 140-160°F (60-71°C). Some
molds make heat-resistant spores, however, and can survive heat treatments in pickled vegetable products. These
molds, however, require oxygen to grow.
Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by microfungi that are capable of causing disease and death in humans and other animals.
Mycoses are frequently acquired via inhalation of spores from an environmental reservoir or by unusual growth of a commensal species that is normally resident on human skin or the gastrointestinal tract.
The majority of mycotoxicoses, on the other hand, result from eating contaminated foods. Skin contact with mold-infested substrates and inhalation of spore-borne toxins are also important sources of exposure.
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The cultivation conditions for cannabis plants create an
ideal environment for the growth of molds and fungi, which, if allowed to proliferate, can begin to produce chemical mycotoxins. These mycotoxins are a
known risk within the food safety industry, and have been linked to kidney and liver damage, reproductive disorders, and immune suppression. Particularly dangerous are the aflatoxins, a type of mycotoxin produced by some aspergillus fungi species, which are
potent carcinogens. Even acute exposure can be life threatening if the dose of aflatoxin is large enough, as the resultant aflatoxicosis can cause severe liver failure.
Cannabis material can
also be contaminated with mycotoxins during transportation, storage, and processing. Given the health risks associated with exposure to these mycotoxins, it’s considered essential for the sake of consumer safety that mycotoxin analysis is carried out as part of the drug’s normal testing regimen.
When it comes to mycotoxin and aflatoxin testing, the regulations are perhaps surprisingly more uniform across the United States than one may expect. Firstly, almost all state testing requirements tend to focus on five mycotoxins in particular: aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, G2, and ochratoxin A.
While there are
more than twenty aflatoxins known to scientists, these four aflatoxins (B1, B2, G1, and G2) have been identified as
the most dangerous to human health. Additionally, aflatoxins B1 and B2 can be metabolized by the body to produce aflatoxins M1 and M2 which
also pose various health risks, including carcinogenicity and genotoxic activity. Ochratoxin A is a concern as, while its exact health effects on humans are unclear, overexposure to the toxin has been
linked to kidney damage and related cancers.
“Exposure to high levels of mycotoxins can be extremely dangerous, especially if the exposure is long-term,” said Amanda Horodyski, the microbiology lab manager at the Maryland-based cannabis and hemp testing laboratory,
Atlantic Test Labs, to Analytical Cannabis.
“The mycotoxins relevant to cannabis, aflatoxin and ochratoxin, have been shown to be carcinogenic,” Horodyski continues. “Consumption or inhalation of high levels aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, and, G2 have been shown to cause liver damage. Ochratoxin A has also been demonstrated to be an immune suppressor and can cause kidney damage.”
“Mycotoxins are extremely difficult to break down, making them a dangerous toxin to find in cannabis,” Horodyski warns.
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Aflatoxins b1 b2 g1 g2
Aflatoxins and ochratoxins are varieties of mycotoxins produced as secondary metabolites from mold species within the genera Aspergillus. Studies have found that many mycotoxins, including
Aflatoxins G1,
G2,
B1,
B2, and Ochratoxin A, are immunosuppressive, carcinogenic, neurologically toxic, and hepatotoxic
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Human food can be contaminated with mycotoxins during storage. One of the principal classes of highly toxic carcinogenic mycotoxins is the metabolite of Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus aflatoxins [1]. Aflatoxins are classified into such four compounds as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), aflatoxin B2 (AFB2), aflatoxin G1 (AFG1), and aflatoxin G2 (AFG2) based on their fluorescence under UV light (blue or green), and in the milk it was aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) and aflatoxin M2 (AFM2) which are the metabolites of AFB1 and AFB2, respectively [2–4]. The toxic effect upon the living organisms of aflatoxin decreases in an order B1, G1, B2, and G2 [5]. AFB1 is the most potent carcinogenic agent associated with hepatocellular carci-noma (HCC), one of the most lethal and common cancers in the world, especially in Asia and Africa. The mycotoxin aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), the most notorious liver carcinogen, has been proven to be genotoxic. Epidemiological studies have shown that chronic exposure to aflatoxin B1 in the diet is one of the important factors in the etiology of liver cancer in experimental animal models, including rats and rainbow trouts.
Heating treatmentAflatoxins are well known to be stable at high temperature. In modern food/feed manufacturing technology, heating treatment is always used to degrade mycotoxins to a certain extent during the processing. Recent studies have shown that AFB1 could be significantly removed at high humidity [9–12]. However, several possible facts are associated with the prediction of the extent of mycotoxin reduction, such as initial mycotoxin concentration, the extent of binding between mycotoxin and food or feed products, heat penetration, moisture content, and processing condi-tions. Nonetheless, heat treatment to partially reduce the mycotoxin concentration in the food/feed stuffs is still the feasible physiological method because heating technique can be carried out easily at low cost. Extrusion cooking is broadly used in the field of food industry, which is an efficient process in food/feed process. High temperature with short-time extrusion is commonly used in the industry [5]
Microwave heat treatmentPerez-Flores et al. [13] found that aflatoxin content could be significantly reduced by microwave thermal-alkaline treatment in the traditional Mexico food tortillas. Using extract acidification methods to mimic human stomach digestion procedure to quantify AFB1 concentration, the results indicated that the aflatoxin reduction was almost permanent. However, this thermal-alkaline treatment for tortilla-making could only remove most of AFB; thus some AFB would be left in the food.
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Within this research project, the LCI (Lebensmittelchemisches Institut des Bundesverbandes der Deutschen Süßwarenindustrie e. V.) conducted systematic studies to determine the thermal stability of the mycotoxins ochratoxin A (OTA) and aflatoxin B1, as the available literature provides contradictory data. Firstly, the said mycotoxins in pure form were subjected to thermal treament. Secondly, tests were conducted to determine the influence of certain matrix substances, including carbohydrates and proteins, on the thermal decomposition behaviour of the mycotoxins. As a result it can be said that OTA seems to be stable up to 180 °C; however aflatoxin B1 was almost completely degraded at heating temperatures of 160 °C and above. In several model assays it could further be shown that the degradation of mycotoxins is improved by the existence of certain matrix compounds.
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Various treatments including chemical, physical, and biological methods are routinely utilized for effective degradation, mitigation and management of aflatoxin (
Shcherbakova et al., 2015). The aflatoxins AFB1 and AFG1 are completely removed by ozone treatment at 8.5–40 ppm at different temperatures, but AFB2 and AFG2 are not affected by this method.
