Cannabis Characterization and Contaminants; Tools for Testing

Anders Fridström, Advanced Analytical, Merck, Stockholm, Sweden

In the quickly changing landscape of cannabis testing, laboratories are faced with the challenge of providing accurate results for a variety of different tests on challenging matrices.  The wide variety of matrices encountered, including both plants, foods, and oily extracts, have complex chemical compositions which include pigments, fats, proteins, and sugars. The sample preparation methods used must provide extracts free of these interferences for accurate and robust testing. 

In this seminar, we will present simple and effective sample preparation and analysis methods for five areas of cannabis testing: pesticides, mycotoxins, residual solvents, and terpenes.  The use of new sorbents for sample cleanup prior to pesticide and mycotoxin testing will be discussed, as well as the use of solid phase microextraction (SPME) as a simple and cost-effective approach for residual solvent and terpene analysis.  For each of these applications, a description of the method procedure along with data showing accuracy and reproducibility will be presented.

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Short Biography of Presenting Author

With a Masters degree in Chemistry, Uppsala University, Anders has been active in various fields in research and quality control related to analytical chemistry like Environmental research, Food analysis and Control of protein pharmaceuticals derived from blood plasma. The last 15 years Anders has been advising analytical chemists about chromatographic separations and sample preparation in different roles for Sigma-Aldrich and Merck