September 30, 2024

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) recently sent a letter to Colorado cannabis businesses, with an emphasis on the growing and processing of cannabis, offering a free consultation to help identify possible dangers such as handling flammable and explosive materials and exposure to unguarded machinery, pesticides, molds, dusts, and chemicals such as hexane, heptane, ethanol, butane, and other potentially harmful solvents.

The voluntary consultation offer is a part of a larger federal initiative to investigate workplace hazards in the legal cannabis industry and will be free of charge. However,  this consultation is only open to any cannabis businesses with less than 250 employees and businesses who do voluntarily agree to the consultation are required to remove all serious hazards that the consultation finds and provide proof that all serious hazards have been removed. While the initial consultation is free, the costs associated with removing these hazards remains a potential barrier for cannabis businesses who are either barely making a profit or breaking even due to wide variety of issues including section 280E of the federal tax code, the “green tax,” and many other financial hurdles unique to the cannabis industry.

The program mainly focuses on the growing, cultivation, processing, and manufacturing of cannabis products as a Trulieve employee in Massachusetts died from “progressively worsening work-associated respiratory symptoms, which culminated in a fatal asthma attack in January 2022” according to a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the CDC. Following an investigation into workplace safety in the cannabis industry, OSHA gave a detailed presentation on the hazards of cultivating and processing cannabis following the tragic incident that outlines potential hazards and employer responsibilities for workplace safety.

The OSHA letter to Colorado cannabis businesses outlines some of the potential hazards to workers in the cannabis industry:

• Exposure to potential fire and explosion hazards from the use of flammable liquids and compressed gases. The handling and transfer of flammable solvents can also result in health hazards, including employee exposure to chemicals such as hexane, heptane, ethanol, and butane, displacement of oxygen from carbon dioxide systems and skin contact with solvents.
• Growing and other production operations such as sorting, stripping, and drying can expose workers to unguarded machinery, pesticides, molds, and dusts.
• Electrical hazards from improper temporary wiring in grow areas and improper electrical installations in production areas is common. Many of the production areas are classified as hazardous locations due to the presence of flammable materials, such as butane or propane, being used in the process.
• Workers may also be exposed to material handling and storage hazards such as the improper use of powered industrial trucks and the improper storage of flammable materials. Workers may also be exposed to work-related musculoskeletal disorders and injuries.
• Many of the extraction facilities involve the processing and handling of large quantities of flammable solvents such as ethanol. Hazardous solvents such as methylene chloride have also been observed. Workers may be expected to respond to spills and other emergencies, thereby exposing them to hazards associated with inadequate emergency response protocols.