I find indoor growers are the worst offenders. Spraying outlawed pesticides and systemics. Pyretherins are neurotoxic. I know because I’ve worked with them, spraying scale in Colorado. They cause numbness, hallucinations, and migraines. Very toxic stuff. What happens when this stuff seeps into trichromes and becomes a part of their cellular structure? Not to mention, indoor environments are much more toxic than outdoor environments. Outgasing of building materials, toxic molds, mites… I find it difficult to justify the use of resources to grow plants under a bulb. It works out to about 6 lbs of coal just to produce an 1/8th of weed. That’s for the shortest flowering indoor strains. And it only accounts for the lighting load. It doesn’t account for the nutrients or the other equipment or repair costs to water and mold damaged properties. Don’t get me wrong. I love marijuana. I suffer from sciatica. It helps me. But I don’t agree with the methods most growers use to produce it.
Not strongly so, and they are not enviro persistent.
It breaks down before then. It isn’t a chlorine encased synthetic structure like DDT or 2,4-D.
What?
The outgassing you’re worried about, most of it would kill the plants, or cause them to fail. Not lace them with poisons.
Incandescent, or sodium vapor lights, yes. But growers use LED lights now, which are massively more efficient. Plus, your estimate is off by a factor or two.
I believe that. I also believe your information on what is toxic about pesticides, buildings, and grow methods to be out of date at least. My background is in hazardous site assessment and environmental toxicology. The concerns you have stated here, other than the ones about how rude it is to ruin someone elses property with black mold from your water leaks, is not based in science.
My background is in architecture. I have hazmat training and have worked with pyrethrins. The majority of growers are still using HPS/Metal Halide. I have never seen an LED grow. Not even in dispensaries. Large scale warehouse grows are not using them.
You may be right about my calculations though. I just double checked. Using coal averaging 1.6x10^7 joules per lb with a generous 30% grid efficiency. It takes ~387kg of coal to power a 1000 watt bulb for 30 days@24hrs and 45 days@12hrs. You will yield about 500 g depending on if you have glass encased hoods or open hoods. Not accounting for wear and tear on infrastructure and declines in efficiency of equipment. Roughly .77 kg of coal / gram of early flowering marijuana. Roughly… Give or take.
If the law didn’t ream growers for having 5+ plants indoor OR outdoor, a lot more people would be growing outdoor. Since you can hide your activities behind closed doors, most metropolitan weed is grown this way. I do not know how it is for green grown where you’re at, but typically the hydro you get in Sydney is very good. Most people I’ve known who sell it also smoke it, so for the most part they are going to care what they have.
The vast majority of growers I know don’t smoke their own stuff. They buy organic outdoor and sell toxic indoor.
As far as the enviro-persistence of pyrethrins, I was told it only begins to break down when exposed to water, hence, rain. That’s why the company I worked for sprayed it on dry days with no rain in the forecast.
