Federal officials and researchers spoke on a webinar this week about the hazards of allergens to workers in the cannabis industry, part of a regional Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program to reduce the risk of occupational injury, illness and death at marijuana businesses.
Speakers for the webinar from OSHA included compliance assistant specialist Meredith Post and industrial hygienist Jason Furlow, who’s based out of the agency’s Denver regional office. Other presenters were Bradley King, an industrial hygienist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and Tess Eidem, a research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder whose work investigates molds, allergens and other pathogens in cannabis environments.
The event was held as part of a local emphasis program aimed at identifying and addressing workplace hazards in Colorado’s legal cannabis industry. In September, OSHA announced it would be offering free inspections of cannabis businesses to help operators identify and remediate dangers as part of the program.
“We wanted to do this emphasis program to reduce injury and illness rates in the cannabis industry,” Post said at Tuesday’s webinar. “The areas we’re going to be looking at are cannabis processing, growing, cultivating and product manufacturing facilities.”
The regional emphasis program applies both to marijuana and hemp operators, she explained.
“The biggest question I’ve been getting since this emphasis program started is, do we cover hemp?” Post said. “And the answer is yes, if you’re processing any plant matter we cover that you fall under the jurisdiction of this emphasis program.”
The program does not, however, cover retail facilities—only workplaces producing and processing cannabis products.
“Inspecting the cannabis industry is not new to us,” Post said in October. “We’ve just decided to do an emphasis program to get into more places and be proactive on some of these injuries and illnesses that we’re starting to see, not only in Colorado, but nationwide.”
Over the last seven years, OSHA offices in Denver and Inglewood conducted 44 inspections, issuing citations to operators, mostly for failing to adequately communicate workplace hazards or implement employee safety programs. But they also examined three fatalities in the cannabis industry, although Post noted this week that at least two of those weren’t specific to cannabis operations themselves.
“One was a fall from a height, another was an ATV rollover at a growing facility and the other was a confined-space rescue,” she said. “That one, we’re kind of teetering on whether it was part of the process or not. That’s a case that’s currently under review.”
Much of Tuesday’s webinar centered on allergens related to hemp and marijuana, which can cause respiratory distress and other health problems.
Eidem, the University of Colorado researcher and a former cannabis industry worker herself, discussed her work looking at bioaerosols—airborne organic compounds like mold spores and other pathogens that can accumulate at cultivation facilities.
“When you’re primarily working with plants, it could be more so sourced from your fertigation systems, your substrate materials. People can spread them. Your ventilation system can spread those around and even allow for accumulation in the dry cure,” Eidem explained. “And then on the processing and packaging side, when you’re working with that plant material, it’s likely that most of the bioaerosol that’s that’s generated in this part of the process are actually from plant materials.” That might include finely ground flower for prerolls, the dust of trichomes or airborne trim material.
While there’s been no peer-reviewed publications looking specifically at allergens in cannabis production processes, the researcher said “we do know that mold spores can be quite high. We know that protein levels can be very high.”
“The scientific community really hasn’t caught up to the cannabis community to really identify those,” she added. So far, however, there are at least five known allergens produced by cannabis.
“One of the big challenges of being an academic at a federally funded institution I can’t actually study cannabis that is commercially produced in the laboratory,” Eidem noted. “Even if I have a Schedule I license, I can only source cannabis from the DEA.”
To get around that obstacle, much of her work has taken place in her home kitchen, where she’s grown her own cannabis from which to take protein samples—analysis of which showed the presence of at least two allergens.
“Even though everyone I know in the cannabis industry loves the plant, it can produce allergens,” Eidem said. “So you have to be aware that it is an allergen source and it could sensitize workers.”
In the cannabis industry, those allergens appear to have caused health issues for a significant portion of employees.
“A survey of different flower technicians in Massachusetts showed that a good chunk of them, 40 percent of them, had some type of respiratory tract or skin irritation when working with cannabis,” Eidem said. In Washington State, meanwhile, flower-processing facilities and cannabis dust were associated with workplace asthma.
“Another study out of Washington State,” she said, “surveyed 31 workers, and 22 reported symptoms. So that’s a pretty high ratio.”
With a better understanding of what allergens are present in cannabis facilities and how to better mitigate them—such as through the use of UV light—industry operators can more effectively guard against workplace hazards.
“It really shows that some of these novel intervention strategies could be effective at potentially reducing exposure to these allergens in all sorts of environments, including potentially the cannabis workspace,” Eidem said.
Furlow, at OSHA, said in response to a question that it’s the responsibility of employers to protect employees.
“So when they develop an allergy, the employer has to provide a safe work environment for those employees,” he explained, “whether that’s providing them, like Dr. Eidam said, with some sort of a respirator or engineering controls to make sure that those allergies are not flaring up while they’re at work.”
“In some circumstances where the allergies are too bad, which does happen, even with the respirators or with the the ventilation or something,” Furlow continued, “then you may need to transfer that employee to another job so they’re not being exposed directly to those those allergens.”
King, from NIOSH, a federal research agency, noted that in 2020, the agency’s director, John Howard, authored a paper calling for more study into how cannabis and work intersect.
In addition to hazards like aerosols, other health risks include exposure to chemicals like butane and ozone as well as physical hazards like noise, ergonomic risks and falls from heights.
As for respiratory distress, King is currently partnering with researchers at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver, which he said is nationally recognized for their work in respiratory health and allergies, to survey up to 300 cannabis industry workers and directly collect various exposure measurements.
“As far as I know, this is the first time that anyone has tried to evaluate and collect air samples in an occupational environment for this specific allergic protein from cannabis,” King noted. “So we’re really looking, I think, at something new in trying to develop methodologies for evaluating the airborne presence of this particular protein.”
The research will also take measurements for ozone, microbes including bacteria and fungi, dust particles and terpenes, he said.
King pointed as evidence of workplace dangers to the fatal case of a 27-year-old woman who experienced breathing issues and collapsed while working at a Trulieve facility in Massachusetts. The company paid OSHA $14,502 to settle the case, also agreeing to conduct a study to “determine whether ground cannabis dust is required to be classified as a ‘hazardous chemical’ in the occupational setting,” according to a press release at the time.
The webinar is the latest outreach from OSHA officials in Colorado as part of the agency’s new local emphasis program. The aim is “to encourage employers to take steps to address hazards, ensure facilities are evaluated to determine if they are in [compliance] with all relevant OSHA requirements, and to help them correct hazards, thereby reducing potential injuries, illnesses, and death for their workers,” according to an executive summary of the campaign.
A report on the new Local Emphasis Program for Cannabis Industries is expected to be issued sometime around early 2027—as well as at the end of the program, in 2029.
Major violations can carry fines of up to about $16,000, while willful or repeated violations can cost more than $160,000. Failure to abate workplace hazards can carry penalties of up to about $16,000 per day.
Separately, an OSHA official said in 2023 that the federal government’s ongoing prohibition of marijuana makes the agency’s job “complicated” when it comes to ensuring the safety of workers in the cannabis industry.
Andrew Levinson, director of OSHA’s Directorate of Standards and Guidance, said at a meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) at the time that “the cannabis industry is a little bit complicated for federal agencies because cannabis is still illegal at the federal level.”
“So there’s kind of state activity going on. We still go out and deal with those issues, but the policy issues there are complicated,” he said, adding at the time that he wasn’t sure if there had been workplace fatalities in the marijuana sector.
Also in 2023, the leader of one of the country’s largest labor unions called on President Joe Biden to end federal marijuana prohibition and urged the president to allow OSHA to “immediately start work on a national workplace safety standard for legal cannabis business, using the regulations set by California as a model.”
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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
Federal officials and researchers spoke on a webinar this week about the hazards of allergens to workers in the cannabis industry, part of a regional Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program to reduce the risk of occupational injury, illness and death at marijuana businesses. Speakers for the webinar from OSHA included compliance assistant specialist Read More
