Residual Solvents

Due to the increasing usage of cannabis for medical purposes also a wide range of cannabis products becomes popular. Cannabis extracts or concentrates like oils, waxes, tinctures, liquids, edibles or pills are already available. Various solvents (volatile organic compounds) were used during the manufacturing process of these cannabis products. Small quantities of these solvents may remain in the products and are commonly known as residual solvents. These residual solvents are classified according to their risk to human health. Headspace as sample introduction technique is commonly used followed by a GC-FID analysis for the quantitative determination of the residual solvents (class 1 and 2) following USP <467>.

Beside GC-FID, GC-MS is applied more and more for this purpose. The advantage of using GC-MS is the identification of any unknown peaks (impurities) detected in such tests. Furthermore, modification of the method for the quantitative determination can be done easily.