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Maine’s OMP to Require Heavy Metals June 1st, 2021

On Friday, January 22nd the Office of Marijuana Policy activated our Adult Use Testing License in conjunction with the City of Portland.

The OMP has notified Adult Use licensees that starting Tuesday, June 1st the required list of analytes will be expanded to include Heavy Metals. This test will be required for Marijuana and Marijuana products. 

The new test category will test your samples for the presence of four toxic metals: Cadmium, Lead, Arsenic & Mercury. It is important to note that a failure for one of these toxins prevents you from remediating the product.

Heavy Metal contamination most commonly comes from your grow media/soil, water, nutrients and manufacturing chemicals. However, you can do a few things now to reduced the risk that you will fail for Heavy Metals once testing is required:

  • Test your raw inputs for Heavy Metals
  • Test your current batches for Heavy Metals before results are reportable to the OMP 

Limits for these chemicals are low and do not allow for much error. The allowable limits are specific to the product type and are given in ppb.

Heavy MetalInhalationIngestion/
Suppository
Topical
 Cadmium (Cd)2005005,000
Lead  (Pb)50050010,000
 Arsenic (As)2001,5001,000
Mercury (Hg) 1003,0001,000

As always, Nova is available to walk you through this and any testing procedure. Do not hesitate to reach out to us and speak with one of our scientists regarding this new test.