Prevention is the NEW Remediation

Indoor growers can prevent the need for costly remediation by adopting the kinds of contamination control practices in use in other industries that manufacture medicines. Because molds and yeasts are prevalent outdoors or in greenhouses, some amount of contamination is expected in all crops cultivated outside. For this reason, all cannabis grown outdoors must be remediated before it can be sold. 

But many growers don’t realize that people are the largest sources of bacterial contamination in any indoor environment. When personnel are moving freely between Mom Rooms and Vegetative Rooms and Cultivation Rooms, unless rigid control protocols are followed, contamination can be carried from one space to the next. By preventing contamination in the first place, costly remediation can be avoided. 

Following harvest, all cannabis is tested for molds and yeasts. While testing is an important tool in any quality management program, one of the most basic tenets of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) is that quality cannot be tested into the product as testing is a reactive process. Only by preventing contamination in the first place can growers be confident that every batch will test negative for the presence of harmful bacteria.

Vapor-Phase Hydrogen Peroxide (V-PHP or VHP) generator systems have been used for decades by pharmaceutical companies to decontaminate their most critical manufacturing spaces. SentrySciences has demonstrated that Bioreset VHP generation systems from Amira can rapidly decontaminate cannabis cultivation rooms to the same 6-log kill sterility level. By decontaminating indoor cultivation spaces between crops, costly contamination events can be prevented.