Heavy Metals Testing
Different types of metals can be found in soils and fertilizers and as cannabis plants grow, they tend to draw in these metals from the soil. Heavy metals are a group of metals considered to be toxic and the most common include lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury.
Most labs are required to test and confirm that samples are under the allowable toxic concentration limits for these four hazardous metals.
SCIENTIFIC METHODS
Heavy metal testing is performed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, or ICP-MS. ICP-MS uses the different masses of each element to determine which elements are present within a sample, and at what concentrations.