Unlocking the Secrets of Cannabis with the Science of Environmental Analytics

it gave entirely to discussing the science of cannabis from an industry in

“Citer's Perspective. It's a great pleasure to be here today with two very interesting”

fascinating individuals. We have Dr. Alex Gunther and Dr. Will Viswete. Dr. Gunther is a professor, a full professor at the University of California Urbine in the Department of Earth System Science. In Dr. Viswete is in the Social Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Guilings School Public Health. I hope I said that right.

And they're both environmental engineers and both started a very interesting company called the Civic Environmental Analytics. This company looks at providing a

science-based approach that looks at the environmental properties of cannabis and

hemp using data that's focused on the emissions produced by these plants and then modeling them with state-of-the-art simulations based on a lot of the research, right? And this is many layers, of course, and it's complex relationships between how one compound interacts with others and interacts with your own environment, but also how everything in this world, you know, be it organic or

inorganic affects us all under normal circumstances, but then also how that can change under stress or more dynamic changes in our environment, right? And how a plant can go from releasing, let's say, in not-use volatile, we're going to

compounds or VOCs on the normal circumstances to then not doing that and how

all that can affect us in the end. So could you guys talk a little bit more about that? Let's just go straight into this. Sure, Ricardo. What do I start off and then I'll hand it off to Alex if that's okay? Sure. Great. So yeah, so the field that I'm involved with is air pollution, right? So I'm interested in air quality, in air quality, it's impacts on both health and climate change. And so in my area of

research, I'm in a school of public health. So we're all engineers and scientists interested in serving public health problems. And one of the biggest global public health problems is our exposure to both particulate matter and ozone. And so for us to really understand what we're exposed to, we understand how those pollutants are formed in the atmosphere. And in the last 40 years we've learned

that volatile organic compounds, those compounds that you refer to, are integral in the system of chemistry that produces both particulate matter and ozone. And if you look at the total global emissions of these volatile organic compounds, one of the largest emissions sources on the planet are from plants. Plants emit these volatile organic compounds, and we call those biogenic

volatile organic compounds. And the anthropogenic is what you refer to, volatile organic compounds are also emitted by manmade sources. But the amount of plant-based VOC emissions far outweighs the amount of manmade VOC emissions from a global perspective. And so in my research, I'm trying to predict what we're being exposed to by particulate matter and ozone in our cities, in our

counties, and all over the planet. And in order for me to have a right accurate representation and estimate for what we have now and what we would have in the

“future, we need to have an understanding of these emissions. And so that's how I”

came about these biogenic, volatile organic compounds, with through collaboration with folks like Alex, who spend their time trying to come up with the bus and most accurate emissions from these plants. And there's a long, you know, Alex, speak of this. There's a long communities who's been doing research and understanding and estimating and quantifying these emission rates. And so that's

how I came about this. I mean through my air quality research, I've been heavily involved in biogenic, volatile organic compounds. And I was in Colorado hanging with friends and with my colleagues at the National Center for atmospheric research. And there were telling me about the industry of cannabis and cannabis is a plant. And the plant is a large amount of those

plants are being put in a very urban area, where those mixtures of those

“VOCs with combustion sources could produce air quality. And so that's how the”

initial idea came about for me and being involved in this company. Oh, and Alex, before we get to far ahead of ourselves, could you give us a little definition of what volatile organic compounds are? You know, these these volatile organic compounds

that's the whole range of compounds including compounds that are emitted by

“plants, which are the odors and smells. So pining is one compound that's the”

odor of a pine tree, laminate is the odor of citrus or wine. So there are a lot of the odors that you're familiar with. But also includes organic bottles that come from the telepipes of our cars, right? So it's all these compounds in the atmosphere and they are compounds that have carbon and hydrogen. There's just a wide range of these, but as we'll mention on a global scale, most of it

is coming from vegetation. On a local scale, of course, in our cities, mostly it's

coming from people, from the combustion of the fossil fuels. But these same compounds

for these these ones coming from the plants, there's a whole biological community who call these plant bottles. So they're studying them because of their importance.

“They have a very important role in plants. You know, it's really fascinating and”

exactly where I wanted to go with this conversation. So let's explore that a bit further. I'm curious as to how you decide to begin integrating your area of research to the field of cannabis. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so the work that I've been doing has been on these large local scales and tried

to quantify and represent these emissions in global climate models, down to large scale

regional air pollution models. And through my connections with Will, as he, as he got interested in looking at the impacts of cannabis and the implications that this could have for the industries that really caught my interest and realized that we can apply the techniques that we use for measuring for observing the magnitude of these emissions and how they vary was a great opportunity to try to apply this to an industry scale.

So you guys spend a lot of your time trying to understand the molecules that make up our atmosphere. And Alex, in your case, you get to hop on planes for Noah, you know, the National Oceanographic and atmospheric administration and go to pretty high elevations to sample the air up there. So you have a really good perspective where idea of what makes up the gases in our current atmosphere. And in your case, Will, you've

been pretty much all over the world trying to understand more about how pollution and these VOCs interact, how they're released from things like cement or even, you know, compounds that give off the new car smell, camera what it is, that's right, those are VOCs. Yeah, so yeah, so I spend a lot of my time trying to make connection between what is it that we're exposed to, the things that we breathe in, gases and particles. And why does

that lead to heart attacks, cancers, asthma, you know, cognitive diseases, all these other

“effects mechanisms in the body. And so it's really important for us to understand that.”

And so what I'm been trying to do is trying to identify what those drivers of toxicity are, how they're formed in the atmosphere, where they are in both time and space. And thinking of ways of reducing those things. How that's applied to the cannabis industry, the emissions that these plants are producing are pretty common. They're not uncommon to other biogenic emissions. And so we actually have, you know, some understanding of what's

going to happen to those emissions once they enter the atmosphere. And we should also say that we've had a long history of developing robust methodologies to allow us to estimate and quantify what these emission rates are. And thanks to the EPA and NSF, and no, we have lots of modeling tools to allow us to assess and quantify what will happen to those emissions. What's interested, and so the knowledge is there, the tools are there. It's just that the due to the federally

illicit substance nature of the substance, the normal federal agencies will be providing the science for this, EPA, NSF, NOAA, OSHA, aren't involved. And so there is a lack of research being done on this relatively new, at least from an illegal industrial standpoint, new crop,

the knowledge of the behavior of these molecules and the atmosphere is there.

“And it's just we need some basic science and research to produce the information that is needed”

to drive those tools so that we can make good decisions. So, how do you conduct a research? What tools and techniques do you use to understand what's in our environment and how that changes? So, how about I set up kind of the overview of how we would normally approach this and then I'll let Alex expand on some of the details of the part that he's most involved in.

And so, our feeling is that, you know, so there's probably three major issues when it comes to cannabis cultivation. One is possible odor issues, the other is possible air quality issues,

and the third is a possible drift, cross-contamination or crop contamination from these plants.

All three of these problems we feel requires a similar approach and the fundamental thing that's needed for the foundation of solving all three of those problems is a good understanding of what is being emitted by these plants. And so, if we know what's actually being emitted by these plants, what molecules and the amount and how they're affected by life cycle, how they're affected by temperature or water, how those emissions are perturbed when we're

harvesting or when we're curing or we're processing, right? All those things have different activities that result in difference amounts of emissions. And so, we have the expertise to quantify those emissions. And now once we have that, then what we could do is build what we call

an emission inventory, which is the second step. So, if the first step is measuring and quantifying

these emissions, the second step is building an inventory. So, whether you're doing for the state of Colorado, for Denver County, or for a single facility, you would take the measurements that we've used. Find a how many plants you have, what's the density of those plants, how much does this plants weigh, how big are they, what life cycle are they, what strain are they? And we aggregate that together and form the emission rate for the county, for the state,

for the country, or for a facility. So, we measure to get the emission factors, we build an emission inventory. And then once we have that inventory, we can do a lot of things to help us understand those three major problems. For air quality issues, there are EPA-approved models that take emissions of VOCs, biogenic or anthropogenic, uses local meteorology and allows us to understand what are the concentrations of those pollutants downwind. You can use that to both

assess air quality impacts, and you can also use that to assess terpened drift on other crops that are downwind. And to some extent, you could also do that to mitigate the odor problem.

“So, where does odor go, you know, and how much do you have? Also, if you want to reduce VOC”

emissions from leaving your facility, you can also purchase control technologies, but you need to know how much emissions are being produced in order that you can optimally capture all that's being needed. So, again, in all those situations, an understanding of the emissions is key to come out with a robust solution for those problems. And I'll end it with this thing. The issue with odor is also quite complicated because no one at this time knows what the molecule

is that's driving odor. Now, eventually, somebody's going to figure that out. And once they do, then it goes again back to, okay, how many of those molecules are being emitted by that facility by this community of facilities, by this county, or by this state? And that goes back again to developing these emission factors, building these emission inventories, and using air quality models to understand where are these pollutants go? Or you just blew a mind with something,

but I'm going to let you finish this question. Okay. And there are two fundamental approaches that we use to understand the emissions from cannabis and other plants. One, we call the the "bottama." And so, with the "bottama" approach, we take the plant and put it in enclosure. In this enclosure, we can control the environment, so the temperature and the light, the humidity, the CO2 concentration, we can control it and change it. So, we can see how the

plants respond to the various environmental conditions. And with this bottom-up, then we can also

“look at individual components, so we can look at whole plant, but I think we can look at individual”

leaves and buds and flowers, and we can investigate the controlling processes with ritual. And so then, with that information, then we can say, well, you've got, you know, a thousand plants

But the second approach we do is, is called the top-down approach. And in this case, we measure

“what's in the air. This could be the air within a greenhouse facility or outside, and we can measure”

the number of molecules there and model from the mission. It essentially inverse model, so we can say if we see this many molecules in the air, there must have been this many embedded from the plants. And so we have these two inhibits from the approaches that we can use, and when we get agreement between these approaches, and we have a lot of confidence in our essence. You said something, Will, that I was very interested in learning more about. You mentioned that

no one knows what actually makes the odor of cannabis, really? They don't know specific

molecule. That's right. Yeah, you can, there's lots of speculation as to what it could be. If you go out and look around, folks say, well, it's the mercy, or it's maybe another BOC, but you know, you can isolate those VOCs and smell them, right? And they don't smell like the smell that people associate with cannabis, especially the the odors that people don't like. So, and, and further, I mean, those VOCs are, again, our uncommon VOCs. These are VOCs that we

find in many other plants that don't have that odor that the cannabis plant has associated with it.

“So, you know, there's several hypotheses out there as to why, or what is driving odor, right?”

Is it something that's being emitted by the plant itself? Is it a trace VOC that we don't know

about that's being emitted? Is it a, for example, a surface bacterial activity that's on the surface of these plants that are producing these monocles and they're even emitted by the plant itself, but maybe by fungus itself? Or is it a secondary reaction where things are emitted by the plant processes in the environment cause reactions to occur and then it produces this odor? That's one of three or four hypotheses that we are currently researching in our own company

to try to discover what, what this driver of the odor really is. And let me, one other thing on that. So, eventually, like we said, we're going to find out or somebody's going to figure out what the odor molecule is. And so, our emission factor measurements, our emission inventory and all our modeling can be based on that odor molecule, right? And so, we can know for sure where the odor is going and how much is it going to be. Also, since we know

which molecules are important, how many molecules they are, the technology that we're designed and to capture those molecules can be optimized specifically tailored for these molecules. And that saves a lot on engineering, on efficiency, on design, knowledge is power, having this information allows you to run a more efficient system. Alex, you mentioned that cannabis is a plant that releases a lot of VOCs, you know, these biogenic VOCs, but there's

“plants that don't, right? So, how does cannabis compare to other domesticated plants that don't?”

Let's say, how, for example, would it feel that cannabis compare to a field of corn? How would VOC emissions compare between both of these plants? Yeah, cannabis is a really a remarkable plant from the VOC emissions perspective. So, throughout the world, there's a huge range over four is magnitude in the levels of these VOC emissions from different plants. And in general, most of the agricultural plants, the grains, wheat, corn,

these have quite low emissions, especially of the turpinway compounds, which are the dominant emissions. Most of these, the, the, the humane and, and lemon, the odor, that you get from from cannabis. These commercial crops have 10 have very low low emissions. Now, of course, you know, the pine trees and cornstrees and nuclear industries, you know, they have relatively high emissions of these compounds. Although cannabis is, is higher than, and even those various, various sources.

So, in the group of plants that off gas or release some of these chemicals, how does cannabis stack up? Yeah, and, and part of that is, you know, when, when people read wheat and corn, there's some particular reason to have the wheat and corn have these, you know, have various odors. And so, in, in cannabis, that's, you know, that's part of what people may be

nothing else in agriculture, there's nothing else close to the cannabis. And even in throughout

“the world out, out in nature, there are very few plants that are at the same level as cannabis.”

But there are, there are ones at the same level of cannabis. Yes, and again, we could let this pine see these ones. Actually, there's a, the dominant global VOC emission, is a compound called ice-free. This is emitted in, in vast quantities. It's about half of a global poll. And it doesn't have much of a note, our, our note is just our sensitivity. It's not sensitive to it. And ice-free, so ice-free emitters like oak trees, these have really high emissions that would

surpass that, that of cannabis. And cannabis has, has very, very limited amounts of ice-free

emission. And for us, for chemists, there's a lot of interest in ice-free, it's really reactive,

it plays a role in ozone, and so ice-free can really dominate ozone issues. But because it's a smaller molecule than the monochromates which are in the water's part of the emission, the cannabis, it doesn't make as much particles in the atmosphere, so that the yield of particles of air salt, which is an important health issue, and also important for climate, the ice-free has

“a much smaller role. In the monochromates, we have a much larger role. I think Alex made an important”

point here. I mean, this is a very unique plant in the way that it's produced and industrialized, you know, every grower has their own kind of unique blend that they're trying to put together

for their maximizing certain terpenes for their strain. And that's unique, the other commercial

plants aren't treated that way, right? Nor are they bred to produce certain terpenes. And so as a result, this plant has kind of a unique breeding as a result of that. The other thing I should mention is that, you know, in our both my work and the work that we've been doing with with specific environmental analytics, we've been able to sample quite a number of strains. I know in Colorado alone there's 600-plus strains that are available. We haven't sample nearly as many as that, but

you know, we've sampled some, and what we found is actually quite startling. The amount of monotirpines or biogenic VOCs that are coming as well as the kind, which molecule it is, which of the monotirpines varies quite differently from strain to strain. So for example, we might see you collect all in one strain and have no you collect all at all in other strains. We also found that the life cycle, whether it's a juvenile or an adult plant, not only changes the rate,

which is kind of expected, but also the profile again, the profile of what those emission rates could be. And so we've gotten so good that we're able to fully fingerprint, if you will, give a complete biogenic VOC fingerprint of every plant that we have measured and can tell you molecule, molecule, all the monotirpines, sesquaterpines and other molecules that are there. And we're building a very big database of these kinds of strains. And one of the

things that we didn't mention that we would like to use this data for his for quality control. I said there's over 600 strains in just the state of Colorado, but there's really no quality control as to what strain you're really going to get, even from a retail standpoint or even from a cultivator standpoint. The clones that you get, are you sure those are the strains that you want? And so one way we think that we could help with that is to use this fingerprinting,

these VOC fingerprinting of plants to help quality control, so say you have 50 juvenile plants and they all, but you're going to be thrilled and fall within a certain profile. Well, those three you don't want to keep growing all the way to maturity because they're not going to have the right profile that you're going to need later on down the line. So again, all these issues and problems go back to understanding exactly what is being emitted by those plants, by strain,

by life cycle and by environmental condition. Interesting. Actually, let's just put it a little bit.

“You guys have tested and essentially fingerprinted a huge library of compounds. And I think”

you mentioned previously that each plant or population of plants has a certain level profile of VOC's release, right, in the different conditions. So when a plant stressed, there released a certain set of compounds versus another. And could you discuss this a little bit more because, because I don't think I'm doing this topic just this. Sure. So I think we let Alex Chancus is more his area, but we know for sure that, you know, these VOCs that are being emitted

and they do react to stresses, right? So we do, for example, when we do our leaf enclosures,

“we try our best not to disturb or stress the plant in any way because that may change the profile,”

right? Now, as far as answering your question as to, are we able to get there yet? We're a very young company. We've, you know, we've started building this database and we're looking at strains, but there is still a lot of information that we don't know about concerning these, you know, it's reactions to stress, it's reactions to drought, it's reactions to differences in light, and what that means for as far as it's profiling. I mean, that requires a really robust research

program, right? And again, you know, the, the characters that would be involved in helping us develop these things aren't involved, that would be EPA and Card Noah NSF, those folks, right?

And so it's just basically me and Alex, right? Trying to do this, and, you know, we are a company,

so, you know, we, you know, can't just do this for free, either. But, you know, that's the goal here. I mean, what we're trying to figure out is, you know, how do we get a handle on this uncertainty

“when it comes to strain variability to emission factors? You know, what is the best way to attack?”

Obviously, we're not going to measure 700 strains. That's, I mean, we could, you know, I would love for someone to pay for that, but, you know, that's probably not the best way to go about that, right? And we have some of our problems in the real world with other plants that we can use and apply to here, right? And so getting around that is one issue. The other issue is we still don't have a good understanding of the plants responses to temperature and light when it comes to emissions and profile,

which would help us get to that place where you're asking. And so we're still, you know, we've been looking at this and, you know, Alex and I are, you know, are certainly experts in this, but we have a real basic understanding right now of how these plants operate and what they emit. And we're learning more and more of the more research we get, but we're still at a very beginning steps of this sort of research program. Well, there are two issues that you brought

up there, and one is a incredible, chemical diversity of cannabis. And we know with other plants

that will have different chemo types and chemo type, meaning same species, but it has a different suite of these VOCs, even minutes. So we call that a chemo type. And with other species, we think there may be four, five, six chemo types with cannabis. There are hundreds, at least hundreds. And so the number of compounds in cannabis that are being emitted, it's much more than we see in other species. So in the most plant species, we'll see, you know, a dozen or less

different detectable compounds. Whereas in cannabis, you see over 200 different VOC compounds. Wow. And so that really makes the cannabis interesting and a big challenge. And the implication is that we can't just go out and measure one or two different strains and different places and then take that out and apply it everywhere. And being said, it's a lot of work, it's big challenge to be able to characterize all of this. Another thing that you mentioned is the

“the stress compounds that I think you're referring to. And so this is the idea that a stress plant”

will emit compounds that we don't see from an unstressed plant. And so that's, and with a lot of other agricultural crops, for example, they don't emit many of these compounds when they're unstressed, but there are certain compounds that almost every plant will emit when it's stressed. And this actually brings up a real sort of fascinating field that's, that's really just starting to take off now, where we're interested in, can you use the measurements of the stress compound

to detect when you've got a problem with your agricultural crop. And so by monitoring these VOCs, we may be able to tell you that your plants are drowning, that there's some kind of pests, some kind of insect pests in there. There's a lot of these VOCs are part of the plants, a defense of vaccines, and so they will emit these various compounds only when they're under certain types of stress. I find it quite fascinating that these plants have a hidden

world of communication signaling. Generally, you know, life processes that were not a tune to, so I was wondering if many of these plants are releasing compounds that are either for defense or toxic, and of the 200 plus compounds released by cannabis, for example, such as terpines and terpenoids, which many say are safe because they're, quote, unquote, natural,

base? Is that something you can answer? There's an excellent question, so we should probably

“be really clear on this, so there aren't any air toxics that are being emitted by the plants”

that we've measured, right? Everything that we've measured are monotirpines, sesquaterpines, which are vault organic compounds. The literature on the toxicity of those monotirpines and sesquaterpines has found very little that any toxicity at all. In fact, the concentrations of these biogenic voces in the ambient environment are actually quite small for the most part, even in

the Amazonian rainforest. We're talking maybe a couple of part per billion. The most definitive

study that I saw on whether there's human toxic effects associated with monotirpines is a study that was done following sawmill workers in North Carolina. Sawmill workers obviously are sawing trees, right, in North Carolina. We have lots of pine trees. And so alpha pineene, which is a biogenic valkyrgonic compound, those workers who are working in those mills are being exposed to part per

“million levels. So thousands, a level higher than what we normally are exposed to for alpha pineene,”

eight hours a day, 40 days, 40 hours a week, you know, most of the year. And what they found was little to no toxic effects associated with being exposed to those levels of valkyrgonic compounds.

And so these monotirpines are essentially non-toxic. Natural, we've evolved with these.

This is why we like the smell of pineene, right, and things like that. In fact, I'll just mention this, but you and I right now are emitting isoprene out of our breath, right? So we also emit biogenic VOCs. Now the issues occur to health issues occur when these VOCs mix with combustion sources with an energy source, such as sunlight or UV lights. These VOCs react and then they form ozone, which is known to hurt human beings and kill, and particular matter, which are aerosolural

liquids suspended in the atmosphere. And so they participate in chemistry that produces what we call

“the secondary pollutants, ozone, and particular matter that have very harmful effects on human health.”

Now, if you are in cultivation, in a room, probably an indoor cultivation, you're going to have relatively high levels, especially compared to the ambient environment of these valkyrgonic compounds. Now that by itself is not something to be alarmed about. However, if there's any sources of combustion knocks, if there's a light source, like UV lights, then there's a strong possibility that in those confined spaces, you may be making ozone in particular matter, and then that is a worry,

right? And that's something that OSHA should be looking into if they could, right? So anyway, now odor, that's different, right? So that's not a human toxic issue. It's certainly impacts folks and lots of ways, right? But that we don't know what molecule that is. It could be a VOC, it could be a secondary pollutant, it could be something else. That we don't know. But I just want to make sure that we're clear because you did bring this up,

that we're not saying monotirpines are toxic by themselves. So I'm very curious if you could describe a bit more about the synthesis and generation of ozone and how that affects us all, because the reason I ask is because I have certain colleagues who have ozone generators that purchase them, to either get rid of smells, or get rid of certain pathogens, etc. And I'm curious, really, could you talk a bit more about that? So ozone likes to react, so that's the whole thing

like to do it, like to react on surfaces, like to react with molecules in your body, and it likes to oxidize, and oxidize are essentially. This is why you're not allowed to take phot photography and museums and stuff, because that flash produces ozone, then altars the chemical up, make up of the painting or whatnot. And so people use that property, the reactivity of it, and things like ozone generators, right? Where what's happening there is the ozone reacting with

whatever the smelly molecule is, they don't care which one is because the ozone's just going to react all of it away, right? Now the issue with that is that we know that when you react and oxidize these VOCs, they form from aldehyde, they form aldehyde, they form carbonules, they form all these nasty oxidized VOCs, which have detrimental effects on human health. And so all those folks that are using ozone generators with their VOCs should be wary of that because the oxidation products from

that reaction produces things like from aldehyde and aldehyde. Now to answer your question,

how is ozone formed? That's different, right? And so basically the three ingredients, you need

sources like your car or your stove or a power plant, right? Those two things have to be

present together in the presence of some sort of energy source, sun shine, the sun for example, or UV lights, or something, right? And then they react together in a very complicated series of reactions to form ozone. And so if you have VOCs but no nox, you're not going to make ozone. If you have VOCs in nox, but you're in the middle of the night, you're not going to produce ozone, right? All three of those things have to be together. And the other kind of, in this, I'll

make this last point, because this is unique to ozone, you do need nox and VOCs together,

“but the ratio of those two things is also very important. In Atlanta, in the Southeast United”

States, we have one of the highest concentrations of ice-trained emissions in the all United States.

The city of Atlanta has tons of VOC that come from biogenics, even more so than maybe the anthropogenic contribution there, right? And so controlling anthropogenic VOCs in Atlanta isn't going to be as effective because there's so much biogenic VOCs that are already surrounding Atlanta. Now, contrast that with Denver, Colorado, which is high desert, lots of combustion sources, but actually not a lot of biogenic VOCs. So in that case, if only they had more VOCs,

they would make more ozone. They got plenty of nox, but just not enough VOC, so the ratio there is that way. And so in Colorado, they decided to put a whole bunch of cannabis cultivations right

in the middle of downtown Denver, a place that's start for VOCs, and if only they had more VOCs,

they would make more ozone, and that's where they put it, right? If they would have put those cultivations, you know, 50 miles to the east in the middle of rural area, where there's not a lot of nox, but plenty of VOCs, that extra VOC isn't going to do much for making ozone. So it's

“the ratio of those two things that are really important and how they produce ozone.”

Yeah, and just like I can follow up on that. So in 40 years ago, we were very interested in these VOCs in the Red Pack on the Global Environment and the Regional Environment, so on the scale of the United States. But we weren't so interested about vegetation in cities, right? Because in the cities, they were just overwhelmed by emissions from cars and other fossil fuel combustion. But because we've done such a good job of reducing those VOC emissions, so cars,

even beyond electric cars, of course. But even cars that are not electric, admitted dramatically lower rate of these VOCs than they did 40 years ago. So that means we've cleaned up the cities to being the Greek, but now the major source of VOC, are vegetation, the biogenics, as well as

“things like consumer products. And so that means that the importance of these biogenic VOC,”

the resultant will send. It's all about a balance between the VOC and the knots. You know, considering that we've had all these massive fires in California and I guess the West Coast recently, I'm curious how, after these fires rolled through, what happens to the forest after everything is destroyed, besides the obvious fall in the VOC count. What happens to our environment in a wire context? Obviously they're not producing VOCs. And so we call this land use land change.

So the how the surface of the earth changes impacts, not just the missions, but also impacts, like, for example, urban heat islands, right? You have lots of convective upward flow on concrete as opposed to a field, right? The moisture content, the radiative reflection, all those things change is a function of what is on the land or what's not on the land. And so yes, so if you have a forest and it burns down, the amount of VOCs that are being put after the fire event, actually

when the fire is going on, it's a whole different story. But we'll say after the fire event, things have settled down back to some sort of steady state, then yeah, there would be less biogenic VOCs from that forest that would come in. And as Alex mentioned before, you know, so much VOCs and missions that are out there, right? And we've gotten rid of a lot of the really big emitters. And so we're getting more and more toward the background VOC. So biogenics,

consumer products, cannabis industry, for example. And so if you reduce the biogenics from one source that makes the other VOC sources more important. And so yes, there's an interplay there

run these predictive models to take into account emissions, meteorology and chemistry, and taking

“to account all of these changes that you say as we go forward. And for example, we do include wildfires”

in our air quality models. What one interesting thing that brings up, though, is that there's evidence that the early successful plants that will come come in. So after a while of fire or a clearer kind of, or other things, that the certainly successful plants tend to be high VOC minutes, particularly of ice, that precursor of the other true noise, but which is the dominant global mission. And so while, of course, why after a fire, you're going to have very low emissions. But in a two or three

years after the fire, you may actually have emissions starting to exceed the emissions that were

there to force previously, you know, it's just a bunch of kind of scrubby young things growing up there. So with regards to the work you guys do, if someone found this interesting and wanted to make a career of studying cannabis, volatile organic compounds, or, you know, the environmental effects of cannabis in this regard, what would an aspiring student, for example, have to do to get on the

“right path to become, you know, to follow in your footsteps, I guess. You know, I think it's a great time right now, or, or, or,”

be environmental field, in terms of getting into this, this very, where people are recognizing that we're, we're getting down to, to really have clean sustainable cities and environments and regions that's, you know, a lot of the issues, but some of it's still unknown, so we need people to study that, but we need people coming up with solutions. As far as, you know, academic preparedness, you know, getting a degrees in environmental engineering and, or, in different universities,

that might be a civil environment sharing or rather under departments. You can with a bachelor's degree, a lot of people, students that I have might graduate and go over for consulting companies that and we're trying to apply these approaches. If you're more interested in getting into kind of the research and developing new approaches to this, then going on and getting a graduate degree, a bachelor's or PhD might be a approach that they didn't want to take. Yeah, I'd agree with that and,

and just, I'd also plug, you know, our University of North Carolina in the School of Public Health,

for one of the, were the very first engineering department in the School of Public Health,

and just as until the last few years, were the only one. And what that means is that we're environmental engineers interested in solving public health problems. So if you're a student who is very much interested in the environment, but really want to focus on the environmental impacts on health, on public health and deal with issues like susceptibility and things like that, then my department is actually really uniquely positioned for that. So if there's an interest

with the intersection between health and engineering and the environment, we're one of the best places

“for that. Fantastic. I honestly find your line of work and the research you guys do fascinating.”

If somebody wanted to contact your company for the services you guys offer, where can they find you? So I was just to go to our website. So I don't know if this is new, but we're actually merging now into a new company starting January 1st of 2021, which is yesterday. And so we're all going to be under the same roof of one company that's called buyers scientific, BYERS scientific. And so there's a dash between buyers and scientific. That's right. So if you go to buyers,

dash, yeah, that's correct. If you go to buyers, dash scientific.com, there's right there, there's an email, get updates. You can put your email address and then we'll put you on our list and make sure. There's also a wonderful photo of Alex. But it lays out nicely our technologies that we use for mitigation, the analysis for emissions, what you and Alex and I have been talking about. And then we also put it under a cloud-based technology to allow us to control all these things

at once. So all three of those solutions are now merged together under buyer scientific. So go to buyers-scientific.com. And how can the listeners find you? You guys. Let's say in other platforms or things, the things you like to do, I know will you do some pretty cool stuff and definitely

be at, oh, crap. Is it buyers? We just got these. Do you know what it is, Alex?

I know. No worries. You guys didn't have to be later or not, and I'll post it up about it. Okay. I know this is no, it's all good. It happens to me two all the time.

“We just got them yesterday. So that's what we got now.”

Oh, that would be the reason for that. But I'm thinking new. That's right. And I'll also plug so for this podcast, I did a radio show for it last week. I'll post it on my site. And for it's a two-hour show,

but for the first hour for your audience, I only did reggae songs. Like rare 70s, 80s,

reggae songs with the word "urb" in the song. So if Scott "urb" in the song, I've played it, and we got 45 minutes. Like you're into a rare dance hall and dub music, check out the show. It will put a link on the podcast or something? Yeah, no, definitely. I'm a huge reggae fan.

“Some people use classical music when they work or study. I use reggae, honestly. It just relaxes”

me. I'm from Puerto Rico and hearing reggae just makes me happy. It makes me think I'm somewhere warm instead of wearing a band cooler. In the islands, that's right. Yeah, so if you like a black or huru al Campbell, I Roy, Sly Dunbar, Tony Rebel. I even got some new stuff, like from Mungo's High Five and old school 70s like Cornell Campbell, but yeah, I've got at least 30 songs, or not 30, maybe 20 songs with the word "urb" in it. So it should be fun. So check out. Yeah,

“we'll put the link up there. Actually, I mentioned the link real quick because I have it open,”

but it's the jazz incognito show.blogspot.com, and you'll find some of the stuff that will produces from 89.3 FM Chapel Hill, WXYZ. WXYZ, WXYZ, Chapel Hill. That's right. So jazz incognito show.blogspot.com. I'll post the "urb" show up there for everyone, and there's over 100 shows up there. I need about 50, 50 between Jamaican music and jazz, so I hope you all dig it. So I was really happy to have you both on the show. You've revealed a side of the research to me, which I didn't even know very much of,

and I hope which I see a huge value in understanding and learning more about. Thank you guys so much for being here. It was a real pleasure. Great record. It's been a lot of fun for me, man. I really appreciate this, and I hope your listeners are able to learn something, and please have them feel

free to contact me, either through my university or through buyer scientific. I always love talking

about the science, and I'd be happy to answer any more questions, and I hope your listeners enjoy the music. Thank you for tuning in to the Cannabis Science podcast. You can find additional episodes at Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite shows. For additional information and show notes, you can find them at our site, CannisSciencePod.com. Cannabis Science podcast is probably brought to you with the generous support of Vancouver Coop Radio, 100.5FM,

CFRO, and independent radio station, whether we're 40 years terming the community and giving voice to the voice list. To the next time, to another episode of Cannabis Science podcast.