To see how the risk characterization might change if different thresholds were selected, a comparison with the ODTC50 ranges from AIHA and the RELs from California was conducted . In the states that have legalized cannabis use medicinally and by adults, the cultivation in warehouses has led to nuisance odor complaints. The grow cycle includes a budding stage with “skunk” odor notes. Most cultivation warehouses stagger the growth cycles, so budding is an ongoing occurrence. As a best practice, exhaust ventilation is passed through an activated carbon filter; however, the efficiency is typically 50-98% , so odorous compounds are still emitted. Colorado has required odor management plans certified by an industrial hygienist to ensure best practices are implemented. In 2003, California was the first state to allow medicinal cannabis use . In 2018, cultivation for adult use became legal . Today, regions throughout the state – such as Sonoma County, Sacramento County and Greater Palm Springs – are managing the side-by-side growth of the indoor-cultivation industry and nearby residences. The first study to report Odor Activity Values for odorants emitted from cannabis identified a list of over 20 substances, which were different than those traditionally associated with cannabis odor . OAVs could only be calculated for those odorants that had existing ODTC50 values in the literature. Samples were not living cannabis plants, but rather fresh, old and desiccated cannabis, and some monitoring was outside storage bags to simulate a person being pulled over by police while transporting cannabis. The most odorous compounds based on OAVs are listed in Table 4.8 and provide a starting point for future odor research.
There are substantial uncertainties in the risk assessment of odorants,greenhouse bench top the greatest being how likely it is that the individual odorants monitored actually are the main contributors to the overall odor sensed. Missing the key odorants invalidates the study. OPM can help identify key odorants that have been compiled into odor wheels . The exposure measurements tend to have less uncertainty than the thresholds against which they are evaluated. ODTC50 values typically range over several orders of magnitude, and the health hazard thresholds incorporate one-to-three orders of magnitude of uncertainty factors in their extrapolation from animal data. Even under controlled conditions using test odorants, panelist threshold testing by dilutions resulted in inter laboratory variation in results up to 4-fold . Accordingly, most risk characterizations are crude, screening-level evaluations that require further refinement if thresholds are approached by exposure estimates. For the experimental and epidemiology studies, all suffer from the problem of self reporting and the inherent variability in human response, which clearly varies by sex, age, pre-existing health conditions and prior experiences. Epidemiological studies of odor and health have notably weak exposure assessments, and experimental studies suffer the lack of standardized exposure methods and difficulty carrying out blinded studies . So far, no toxicological study has been able to separate the health effects of odors from those of the co-pollutants in the mixture . The health effects reported by residents living near odor sources may be due to odorless co-pollutants with odor serving as a marker of exposure . Few epidemiology studies, however, look at this possibility. Proximity to an odor source would be a determinant; however, residence distance to the source was often a poor predictor of odor induced health complaints. The sole experimental study of odor , which was discussed in Section 4.3, could not separate the effects of odors from those of co-pollutants in the mixture. Risk perception plays a large role in how exposures to odors can lead to annoyance and outrage. Risk perception has been defined as how the exposed judge the severity of the risk and involves personal and cultural values and attitudes.
Different perceptions of risk are applied to involuntary, imposed exposures, man-made sources and the unfamiliar. Odors often encompass all three of these factors. Key worries from odor exposures include long-term health ailments such as asthma or lung cancer , ability to socialize at one’s own property that is odor impacted, and potential decrease in property value . These perceived risks likely are experienced disproportionately by disadvantaged communities. The air monitoring of the community north of Denver was funded by USEPA as an environmental justice study , and a community well-being study followed shortly thereafter . Participants took an online survey four times over a year. The results at the community level showed that odor-impacted communities had no difference in well-being than the control communities. Individual results, however, showed that respondents who reported that the air was “very fresh” or “odor is highly acceptable” had higher levels of well-being. This finding supports other studies that indicate that unpleasant odors lead to annoyance, general psychological stress, and reduced quality of life. Researchers in Australia studied environmental justice and odors around Melbourne . They used a novel cluster approach to represent communities affected by odor and concluded that self-reported odor exposure correlated with indicators of socio economic disadvantage in the community clusters affected by odor.Large gaps exist in the dataset used to evaluate the health risks posed by odors. Chief among these is the lack of dose-response studies for total odor exposure rather than just for individual odorants. Only a single experimental study of odor mixture exposure and health effects has been conducted . Clearly, more studies are needed, especially measuring physiological and psychological responses simultaneously so correlations can be determined. Longitudinal “before-and-after” epidemiology studies are needed to determine the magnitude of impact of installing an odor-emitting facility near a neighborhood.
For example, the large health-effects study in California after the natural gas leak in Aliso Canyon would benefit from pre-leak community health data. To aid exposure assessment, analytical techniques and sampling require improvement. For one set of odorants – additives to natural gas to impart odor – broad availability of laboratories with the capability to measure sulfur compounds at sufficiently low detection limits is both a health and a safety need . Both short- and long-term health-effect studies of these natural gas additives are also needed. Self-reporting of health symptoms, which is subjective, needs to be replaced with objective measure to make scientific progress in odor risk assessment. Odors add a substantial layer of complexity to traditional human health risk assessment. First, they lead to two types of sensory responses – irritation and smell – that are entwined. Together or separately, these senses, when overwhelmed, can lead to either transitory or more permanent health effects. In addition, odorless co-pollutants can contribute to adverse effects, and their contribution is difficult to separate from that of the odor. Odors are typically mixtures of individual odorants and other airborne compounds, and both odor assessment and conventional risk assessment more easily assess single compounds rather than mixtures. The variability in human responses to odors adds a large degree of uncertainty to any assessment. As with the human health thresholds derived through dose-response bench marking and extrapolation,botanicare rolling benches the odor detection thresholds often have several orders of magnitude of variability between studies and panels. Odor characteristics and the individual’s past experience with the odor, sex, age, culture, mood, personality and health status all influence odor perception. Risk characterizations that use such thresholds are crude at best, and a portion of the population will continue to sense the odor even below the threshold. Several case studies demonstrate that odor thresholds and health thresholds can be applied to odorant exposures to estimate sensory and health effects. How well this odorant-by odorant approach addresses the health risks to communities is an area in need of further research and objective methods. Although there is a general sentiment that marijuana decriminalization has no effect on demand, the more careful evaluations conducted on samples from the United States and Australia have inconclusive findings. For example, studies of decriminalization in South Australia and in the Australian Capital Territory report no changes in marijuana use associated with this legal change, and no differences in marijuana use between these regions and non-decriminalization regions of Australia. However, two recent studies using individual level data from the National Drug Strategy Household Surveys do find a positive effect of decriminalization . In theory, any deterrent effect of levels of marijuana sanctioning should be mediated by citizens’ perceptions of their certainty and severity.Various lines of evidence suggest that citizens may have distorted or biased beliefs about sanctioning threats . Thus, a possible explanation for the inconsistency in decriminalization effects in the literature is that citizens’ perceptions may not vary in accordance with differences in law or enforcement. To address this question we examined data on knowledge of U.S. state laws from the 2001 National Survey on Drug Use and Health . The NSDUH is an annual national household survey of the non-institutionalized U.S. population 12 years and older conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration . It is the primary source of information on the prevalence of use of illegal drugs for the U.S. population.
Since 1999, approximately 70,000 individuals have been interviewed each year across the United States with at least 900 respondents in each of the 50 states. Great care is taken to ensure that information on illicit drug use is accurately reported. For example, the questions on illicit drug use are self-administered through a computer assisted interview survey, no names are used or collected during the interview, and interviews are conducted in private settings away from other people in the household.In 2001, the NSDUH included questions for the first time pertaining to the individual’s knowledge of state marijuana laws. All individuals taking the survey were asked, “What is the maximum legal penalty in for first offense possession of an ounce or less of marijuana for your own use?” Possible responses were a fine, probation, community service, possible prison sentence, mandatory prison sentence, and Don’t know. Information on the weighted fraction of the state sample reporting specific penalties were aggregated to the state level and made available to us by the Office of Applied Studies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration . To these state aggregated data we merged information on each state’s statutory penalties associated with possession of one ounce of marijuana for first time offenders.The penalties represent laws in effect as of January 1, 2001, and were collected and analyzed by a team of lawyers and policy analysts at the MayaTech Corporation. Penalties that were captured include the minimum and maximum jail term, minimum and maximum fine, conditional discharge provisions, and expungement provisions for the lowest two quantity trigger amounts, which capture amounts of one ounce or less for all states.The conditional discharge variable reflects instances where compliance with the specified conditions leads to a dismissal of charges. The first column of Table 2 presents the fraction of the state population reporting a particular maximum penalty across all states, regardless of the state’s actual penalties. On average we see that nearly one-third of the population do not know what the maximum penalty is for marijuana possession offences in their state and another third believe that possible or mandatory jail is the maximum offence. What is particularly surprising is the result that 6% of the population reports that mandatory jail is the maximum offence for possession of an ounce of marijuana. This is surprising because no U.S. state requires a mandatory jail time for marijuana possession offences. To evaluate whether individuals understood the maximum penalty for possession of marijuana in their state, we differentiated states based on their statutory provision of jail sentences. We first separated states based on whether they were recognized in the literature as having a decriminalization policy or not . Although we showed in Table 1 that these policies do not reflect actual differences in the criminal status of marijuana offences, it may be the case that the mere label that has been applied to these states for the past 25 years might generate a greater awareness of the state’s actual penalties for those living within these states. If people living in decriminalized states were actually aware of this labeled policy , then we would expect that they would be less likely to report jail as the maximum penalty and more likely to report fines, probation, or community service as the maximum penalty than people living in non-decrim states.