You don't need us to tell you about the importance of clean products. The industry news these days has too many reports of product recalls due to contamination.
Those are bad for our business. More importantly, they’re dangerous for our customers. Our first responsibility as business owners is to keep our customers safe.
Because you read our blog, we know that, like us at CannaTrim, you are committed to quality, safety, and running a professional business. But, we’ve recently learned about a trap hidden in your PPE gloves that could lead to product recalls.
Even using FDA-certified gloves doesn’t protect against this containment. It's called o-Phenylphenol, and today we're going to tell you all about it, how it can cause you problems, and why you need to switch your PPE vendor to a reliable partner today.
What are o-Phenylphenols?
o-Phenylphenol (or 2-Phenylphenol) is an agricultural fungicide under several trade names, including Dowcide, Torsite, Funal, Preventol, Nipacide, and others. For our beloved chemistry nerds, its formula is C12H10O. That’s twelve carbon atoms, ten hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom.
It’s used as a general surface disinfectant in homes and hospitals, but can also be used in the rubber industry as a laboratory reagent. However, despite its uses, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has identified it as a compound known to cause cancer, and able to contaminate the products it touches.
The reason all this science matters to your business is that o-Phenylphenols in PPE gloves have led to the recall of cannabis products, including with pesticide-free companies like Freya Farms. Those same PPE gloves might be sitting in your workspace right now and you wouldn’t know it until it's too late.
What if I’m using FDA-compliant gloves?
What’s especially surprising is that the gloves in the Freya Farms case were specifically FDA-compliant. We’ll forgive you for being confused about this. Aren’t we supposed to be able to trust FDA-compliant gloves to NOT contaminate things?
The answer is that after the initial approval of the FDA, non-sterile food grade gloves are not continuously checked or certified. Especially the reliability of the raw material ingredients during manufacturing.
That makes it easy for glove manufacturers to cut corners and use cheaper materials that introduce toxic compounds. Materials like o-Phenylphenols.
Incidentally, these materials can also reduce the gloves' durability, making them even more dangerous. Contamination with a carcinogen is bad enough without adding employee injury or biological contamination to it.
What Can I Do?
The good news is that there is a solution for you, and it's an affordable one. You need to change your PPE supplier to a trusted source that won't swap in low-quality materials to save money. You need a partner.
CannaTrim is an excellent example of such a trustworthy partner. Our founder, Brian Paine, has twenty years of cannabis industry experience under his belt, so he knows the ins and outs of our industry’s specific needs and regulations.
In other words, he knows what to look out for. That's why Brian personally traveled to the factories where our products are made to inspect their quality and design.
Our gloves are lightweight, durable, and designed specifically with the cannabis industry in mind. They won’t contaminate your product with o-Phenylphenols and they won’t fail you when you need them.
You might be worried that this level of quality comes with an equally high price tag. But we understand the margins the cannabis industry is working under and have priced our products accordingly. Once you factor in our 5% subscribe and save discount or our 10% bulk discount, you can’t afford not to work with a trusted partner.
Try our sample kit today to see what you might be missing out on. You have enough to worry about - accidental o-Phenylphenol contamination shouldn’t make your list.
