Researchers have revealed that people who smoke marijuana have high levels of cadmium and lead in their bodies.
"Because the cannabis plant is a known scavenger of metals, we hypothesized that individuals who use marijuana will have higher metal biomarker levels compared with those who do not use," the researchers wrote in the paper.
The term "scavenger" refers to how marijuana plants suck up metals via soil, fertilizers, water and pesticides. If that's where the heavy metals in users' blood is coming from, there may be a silver lining for stoners: weed carefully grown to be isolated from sources of heavy metals could still be safe.
The study also found that dual users and exclusive tobacco users both had high levels of cadmium and lead in participants' blood and urine samples, which aligns with common knowledge about theThe study didn't differentiate between methods of consumption, such as the difference between smoking and eating edibles.
This research is intriguing and ominous because marijuana ranks as the third most used drug across the globe — and in an era of rapidly spreading legalization and decriminalization, there's often an attitude among users that it has no potential for harm. "Because marijuana is relatively unregulated in an industry experiencing exponential growth, there is a need to understand contaminant exposures, including metals, associated with marijuana use," the paper reads.
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