Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Life

Interview: How to identify lung disease linked to vaping (Includes interview)

The startup Cann-ID has committed resources to develop practical testing methods to identify vitamin E acetate oil in hemp and cannabis derivatives including vape oils. The company is committed to supporting the hemp and legal cannabis industry with an ongoing commitment to best practices relating to testing.

Cann-ID will be able to screen for vitamin E acetate using their precise in-house lab hardware and cloud-based potency testing software to process accurate reports in minutes. To learn more, Digital Journal spoke with D. Cree Crawford, Co-Founder/ President /COO of Cann-ID.

Digital Journal: What is EVALI?

D. Cree Crawford: EVALI: The name given to vaping-related illness is E-cigarette, or Vaping, product use Associated Lung Injury (EVALI). Characteristics of EVALI include respiratory symptoms such as cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath, and gastrointestinal symptoms including abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, chills, weight loss, and possibly death.

DJ: How is EVALI linked with vaping? What type of vaping causes the condition?

Crawford: While experts know that e-cigarettes and vaping products are involved, they’re not exactly sure what it is about those products that’s causing the lung illness. The CDC did note that more than 80 percent of cases of EVALI involved products with THC (the chemical responsible for most of marijuana’s psychological effects). As a result, officials are looking into thickeners and additives that are found in black market THC cartridges.the CDC announced that in their testing of the 29 patients, ALL of them had vitamin E acetate in their lung fluid. It is probably worth mentioning that to provide the context to why anyone should care about it.

Some pathology reports have also shown that vaping causes fat to accumulate in the lungs, and that triggers an inflammatory response that makes it hard to breathe, says Osita Onugha, MD, a thoracic surgeon and director of thoracic surgery research and surgical innovation lab at the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.

DJ: What is the Cann-ID vitamin E screening solution?

Crawford:Ionization Lab’s Cann-ID testing solution is primarily focused on qualifying AND quantifying 14 common cannabinoids found in Hemp/Marijuana flower and concentrates (including vape oil).

Cann-ID is the only turn-key, scalable, cloud-based, lab-grade cannabinoid potency profile testing solution for cannabinoid quantification in marijuana & hemp. Cann-ID is a testing solution developed by Ionization Labs, strategic business solutions providers to the agriculture industry. Cann-ID can standardize potency testing of cannabinoids (hemp/marijuana) flower & oil extract derivatives. We understand the current testing environment with limited lab testing capabilities and throughput, make it extremely challenging to meet market demands for hemp/marijuana testing and this will only increase as the market matures.

The Cann-ID solution program has simplified and removed the “bottleneck in testing to allow the US hemp industry to develop and grow. Cann- ID consists of hardware, proprietary software, and a subscription that provides standardized consumables packages to perform accurate and reproducible testing results in de-centralized locations. (on-farm / in-lab, mobile unit, academic institutions, designated state testing stations). We offer the only cloud-based analytical solution in the market. The solution is for anyone, even those with little to no scientific background.

The hardware is lab grade; our software makes it scale. Cann-ID utilizes hardware platforms from the world’s top analytical device manufacturers. These devices are used worldwide in some of the most demanding Industries. Cann-ID creates chemical analysis at scale, market ease of operation, and cost-effective. Our brand is synonymous with a superior on-site potency testing solution. We are delivering a transformation using only the best technology focused on acquiring accurate and applicable data to help hemp and cannabis business run more effectively.

DJ: How did you develop the solution?

Crawford:As soon as the media began to run stories about EVALI related illness, our company took note. Ionization labs and Cann-ID was created as an answer to positive impact and support the burgeoning hemp and marijuana industries. We are committed to best practices including solving industry wide operational chalets one such issue is the “Bottle-neck created by volumetric testing demands generated by hemp/marijuana professional growers and extract producers requiring frequent and relevant operational data.

This potency used to maximize quality and revenue. Cann-ID not only produces accurate cannabinoid potency data, it applies it to precision farming and in-line calibration and yield maximizing for extract producers (oils, shatter, wax etc.). There are only a few hundred “centralized labs” servicing 2 huge industries. The Cann-ID De-centralized solution helps alleviate bottlenecks , giving an on-farm and in-extraction lab solution, Of note, Cann-ID does not replace formal COA (certification of Analysis) reports. It supplements powerful and valuable business data aggregation.

We already had successfully developed and deployed in market potency testing solution to identify and quantify cannabinoids in Hemp/Marijuana. The immediate plan was to secure a pure sample (a “standard” of vitamin E. We then incorporated vitamin E into our already successful testing method. And because of our unique cloud-based / networkable software program, we are able to easily update our satellite based clients around the country through a “push update “ to our testing library.

DJ: What has been the interest from the vaping industry?

Crawford:We have only recently developed this testing method. We are happy to share our solution to the industry in efforts to keep striving toward best practices.

DJ: How does the networkable platform work and what will the data be used for?

Crawford:Anonymous aggregate data is utilized by Ionization labs in efforts to continually optimize our testing platform and user experience and real time data may be shared by selected / approved members of a company ecosystem. One hypothetical use cases could be a dispensary or other organization subscribing to our Cann-ID testing solution and offering on-site / live testing of consumer products. Perhaps even a mobile testing unit that can cater to a number of locations.

Avatar photo
Written By

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

You may also like:

World

Calling for urgent action is the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Business

The cathedral is on track to reopen on December 8 - Copyright AFP Ludovic MARINParis’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, ravaged by fire in 2019, is on...

Business

Saudi Aramco President & CEO Amin Nasser speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas - Copyright AFP Mark FelixPointing to the still...

Business

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal infers that some workers might be falling out of the job market altogether.