CBD Authenticity Testing

Adulteration of products has been a major issue in many industries already, that increasingly requires monitoring and regulation.

CBD Authenticity Testing

Adulteration of products has been a major issue in many industries already, that increasingly requires monitoring and regulation.

With the growth of the CBD-based products market, the search for cheap raw materials such as artificially produced CBD could become a big problem. There are already a number of studies reporting the use of artificial cannabinoids and their potential health risks, a key issue is looking for evidence of adulteration with low-cost, low-quality synthetic CBD.

Two usual forms of adulteration can happen. The first is the sale of CBD as being of natural source when in fact it was artificially synthesized. The second, synthetic CBD, may have been added to natural CBD to reduce costs. Not only would this be a substantial issue from a fraud perspective but another possible risk of adulteration with low-quality CBD with the ‘impurities’ that would be considered contamination and thus a risk to consumer health.

Through the traditional method of detection of cannabinoids using the HPLC-DAD, (-)-CBD and (+)-CBD are indistinguishable. PhytoVista Laboratories have developed a special separation method coupled with LC-MS detection that is able to distinguish these molecules. The result reported in the certificate will be given in percent enantiomeric excess. (% ee) which is a measurement of purity used for chiral substances. The result is the degree that one molecule is present in greater amounts than the other. So, for example, if you get a result of 99.5% it means that the sample has high purity and there is no evidence of adulteration with low quality synthetic CBD.