Tokalot VI
- rSin
- Karma Hippie
- Custom Title: world where everone gets
- Location: neck deep
- Has bestowed Karma : 1668 times
- Received Karma : 1064 times
- Posts: 7295
- Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:12 pm
Tokalot VI
i saw 2feet in three hours once...
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
- rSin
- Karma Hippie
- Custom Title: world where everone gets
- Location: neck deep
- Has bestowed Karma : 1668 times
- Received Karma : 1064 times
- Posts: 7295
- Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:12 pm
Tokalot VI
can anyone find this article thats behind a paywall?
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... rveillance
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... rveillance
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
- Intrinsic
- Advanced Grower
-
Karma Hippie
- Has bestowed Karma : 2257 times
- Received Karma : 1859 times
- Posts: 8379
- Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 10:51 am
Tokalot VI
How China cornered the facial recognition surveillance market
BY YUAN YANG IN BEIJING AND MADHUMITA MURGIA
FINANCIAL TIMES
DEC. 9, 2019 6 AM PT
What do Uganda’s police force, a Mongolian prison and Zimbabwean airports have in common? All three are in the process of testing facial recognition systems and all three have used Chinese technology to do it. At least 52 governments are doing the same thing, according to research by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Chinese facial recognition companies have taken the lead in serving this growing international market not least because of the advantage they have over peers in other countries: a massive domestic market and an authoritarian system where privacy often takes a back seat. According to IHS Markit, China accounted for nearly half of the global facial recognition business in 2018.
“There are protests around the world from Lebanon to Chile and Iraq, and a lot of these governments, whether it’s liberal democracies or more autocratic, are in tenuous positions,” says Steven Feldstein, a fellow at the Carnegie think tank. “Now, there is technology available that allows them to fight back against political mobilization.”
Critics and human rights campaigners have accused Beijing and the surveillance companies of “exporting authoritarianism” via the technology that has been used at home as part of a security crackdown that has led to the detention of more than 1.8 million people, predominantly Uighur Muslims, in the Xinjiang region.
Chinese companies may be the most successful, but they are not the only ones supplying surveillance technologies to governments. Rivals from Israel, Japan and America are competing to do the same, while often sourcing components from the U.S.
Research by Feldstein into the global expansion of artificial intelligence surveillance found that Chinese tech companies — particularly Hikvision, the world’s biggest surveillance camera vendor, Huawei, Dahua and ZTE — have supplied countries ranging from Australia to Myanmar and Kazakhstan.
“These companies are particularly well-suited to provide” advanced surveillance capabilities, says Feldstein, “but also they are willing to go to markets that perhaps Western competitors are less willing to go to.”
On the roads leading into Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, surveillance cameras flash at every car passing in and out of the perimeter of the urban center, capturing and analyzing the identities of their occupants. Chinese telecom company Huawei boasts that its cameras led to a 46% drop in the regional crime rate in 2015. Local government figures suggest the impact was smaller, and only short-lived.
The company, which was blacklisted for allegedly posing a threat to U.S. national security this year, has supplied surveillance equipment — including facial recognition — to roughly 230 cities worldwide, stretching from western Europe to large swaths of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It supplies more countries with artificial intelligence video surveillance than anyone else, according to Carnegie.
“Huawei has been investing heavily in the developing world in a way their telecom provider competitors haven’t. It is perfectly pitched for surveillance projects,” says Henry Tugendhat, a researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “The governments have an interest in security and companies have an interest in selling.”
But the question of who is driving the surveillance rollout is not straightforward.
“I would beware of the idea that Africa is a blank slate, where the Chinese arrive bringing their oppressive ways,” says Iginio Gagliardone, author of “China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet.” “Companies are spinning their products to fit the political demands of African elites.”
Hikvision, which grew out of a government research institute but is now only partially state-owned, has a growing international presence, supplying video surveillance infrastructure from Brazil to South Africa and Italy. It is one of a clutch of Chinese tech companies — along with Dahua, SenseTime and Megvii, among the world’s leading artificial intelligence software vendors — to have been blacklisted by Washington over alleged involvement in supplying technology used in Xinjiang.
Yet Chinese domination of the market shows no sign of waning. According to figures from IHS Markit, China’s market expanded by 13.5% last year, whereas the global market — excluding China — grew by just 5%. In 2017, Chinese state media boasted that the country had built the world’s biggest video surveillance system, employing more than 20 million AI-enabled cameras.
Chinese companies have previously operated under loose regulation at home and abroad, but are now facing challenges from the public unhappy at the expansion of facial recognition. Some 80% of respondents in the country’s first mass survey on the issue, released on Thursday, feared data leaks from facial recognition operators.
“When you’re arguing with public bodies like the Beijing subway about their use of facial recognition, there’s no point talking to them about data protection,” Hong Yanqing, a scholar at Peking University, told a recent forum in Beijing. “Instead we need to have a debate about the appropriateness and proportionality of using” facial recognition.
Hong helped draft the government working group’s report on personal data protection standards.
The widespread use of facial recognition in China is in part a reflection of how many activities already require real-name identification. Face scans have replaced or augmented human identity checks in hotels, flights and trains, and at banks and hospitals. Regulations, which came into effect last week, require telecom carriers to scan the faces of users registering for mobile phone services.
ut facial recognition is also being used to extend surveillance in new ways, such as tracking the classroom behavior of students. The country’s rapidly expanding network of facial recognition cameras means many people are now subject to mass identification. China’s police force already holds the world’s biggest national database of more than 1 billion faces, captured for the national ID card system. Depending on the quality of these photos, they can be matched to people posing for a face scan.
The industry is beginning to pay attention to the complaints. SenseTime announced last week that it will lead a consortium of 27 companies to help set national standards for facial recognition, under the guidance of a government standards body. “The public is increasingly paying attention to the security problems faced by this technology,” the company wrote in a social media post.
While debate over the use of facial recognition in the European Union and the U.S. is focused on the privacy threat of governments or companies identifying and tracking people, the debate in China is often framed around the threat of leaks to third parties, rather than abuses by the operators themselves.
China’s courts received their first challenge to the commercial use of face scans in October. When a zoo in Hangzhou forced season pass holders to submit to face scans for entrance, Guo Bin, a professor at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, sued the zoo in order to keep his personal information private. Face traits are “sensitive personal data,” he said in a court submission, arguing that the data could be leaked or stolen.
Most Chinese people approve of the use of facial recognition for convenience and improving security, but remain concerned about privacy abuses, according to Beijing’s Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Center, which conducted the mass survey.
The installation of an in-class facial monitoring system at China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing in September sparked widespread online criticism. As part of a new “smart campus” system, the school installed face scanners in two classrooms to track attendance and to catch students dozing, playing on their phones or talking in class. It “effectively solves the difficult problems of managing attendance and low efficiency,” the school says.
In response, China’s education ministry said the department would add restrictions and regulations on the use of facial recognition in schools, and hoped they would be “highly cautious” in using the technology.
Israeli companies like AnyVision and Elbit Systems have supplied technology to the U.S., while Ukrainian start-up Riddletag uses Amazon’s facial recognition technology to allow access to passengers in the Tbilisi subway in Georgia.
“U.S. companies, for all the lip service they pay to technology and ethics, are also building surveillance tech, and indeed supplying Chinese companies that produce it,” says Stephanie Hare, an independent researcher of facial recognition technology and ethics, and a former employee of Palantir. “This leaves everyone else with a decision: be spied on by the U.S. or by China? This point was made in the German parliament last week, and the U.S. was very upset about it, saying there can be no moral equivalence between China’s authoritarianism and U.S. values.”
Meanwhile, China’s surveillance industry is already moving on to the next frontier of computer image recognition: identifying people by the way they walk and trying to read their emotions.
BY YUAN YANG IN BEIJING AND MADHUMITA MURGIA
FINANCIAL TIMES
DEC. 9, 2019 6 AM PT
What do Uganda’s police force, a Mongolian prison and Zimbabwean airports have in common? All three are in the process of testing facial recognition systems and all three have used Chinese technology to do it. At least 52 governments are doing the same thing, according to research by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Chinese facial recognition companies have taken the lead in serving this growing international market not least because of the advantage they have over peers in other countries: a massive domestic market and an authoritarian system where privacy often takes a back seat. According to IHS Markit, China accounted for nearly half of the global facial recognition business in 2018.
“There are protests around the world from Lebanon to Chile and Iraq, and a lot of these governments, whether it’s liberal democracies or more autocratic, are in tenuous positions,” says Steven Feldstein, a fellow at the Carnegie think tank. “Now, there is technology available that allows them to fight back against political mobilization.”
Critics and human rights campaigners have accused Beijing and the surveillance companies of “exporting authoritarianism” via the technology that has been used at home as part of a security crackdown that has led to the detention of more than 1.8 million people, predominantly Uighur Muslims, in the Xinjiang region.
Chinese companies may be the most successful, but they are not the only ones supplying surveillance technologies to governments. Rivals from Israel, Japan and America are competing to do the same, while often sourcing components from the U.S.
Research by Feldstein into the global expansion of artificial intelligence surveillance found that Chinese tech companies — particularly Hikvision, the world’s biggest surveillance camera vendor, Huawei, Dahua and ZTE — have supplied countries ranging from Australia to Myanmar and Kazakhstan.
“These companies are particularly well-suited to provide” advanced surveillance capabilities, says Feldstein, “but also they are willing to go to markets that perhaps Western competitors are less willing to go to.”
On the roads leading into Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, surveillance cameras flash at every car passing in and out of the perimeter of the urban center, capturing and analyzing the identities of their occupants. Chinese telecom company Huawei boasts that its cameras led to a 46% drop in the regional crime rate in 2015. Local government figures suggest the impact was smaller, and only short-lived.
The company, which was blacklisted for allegedly posing a threat to U.S. national security this year, has supplied surveillance equipment — including facial recognition — to roughly 230 cities worldwide, stretching from western Europe to large swaths of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It supplies more countries with artificial intelligence video surveillance than anyone else, according to Carnegie.
“Huawei has been investing heavily in the developing world in a way their telecom provider competitors haven’t. It is perfectly pitched for surveillance projects,” says Henry Tugendhat, a researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “The governments have an interest in security and companies have an interest in selling.”
But the question of who is driving the surveillance rollout is not straightforward.
“I would beware of the idea that Africa is a blank slate, where the Chinese arrive bringing their oppressive ways,” says Iginio Gagliardone, author of “China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet.” “Companies are spinning their products to fit the political demands of African elites.”
Hikvision, which grew out of a government research institute but is now only partially state-owned, has a growing international presence, supplying video surveillance infrastructure from Brazil to South Africa and Italy. It is one of a clutch of Chinese tech companies — along with Dahua, SenseTime and Megvii, among the world’s leading artificial intelligence software vendors — to have been blacklisted by Washington over alleged involvement in supplying technology used in Xinjiang.
Yet Chinese domination of the market shows no sign of waning. According to figures from IHS Markit, China’s market expanded by 13.5% last year, whereas the global market — excluding China — grew by just 5%. In 2017, Chinese state media boasted that the country had built the world’s biggest video surveillance system, employing more than 20 million AI-enabled cameras.
Chinese companies have previously operated under loose regulation at home and abroad, but are now facing challenges from the public unhappy at the expansion of facial recognition. Some 80% of respondents in the country’s first mass survey on the issue, released on Thursday, feared data leaks from facial recognition operators.
“When you’re arguing with public bodies like the Beijing subway about their use of facial recognition, there’s no point talking to them about data protection,” Hong Yanqing, a scholar at Peking University, told a recent forum in Beijing. “Instead we need to have a debate about the appropriateness and proportionality of using” facial recognition.
Hong helped draft the government working group’s report on personal data protection standards.
The widespread use of facial recognition in China is in part a reflection of how many activities already require real-name identification. Face scans have replaced or augmented human identity checks in hotels, flights and trains, and at banks and hospitals. Regulations, which came into effect last week, require telecom carriers to scan the faces of users registering for mobile phone services.
ut facial recognition is also being used to extend surveillance in new ways, such as tracking the classroom behavior of students. The country’s rapidly expanding network of facial recognition cameras means many people are now subject to mass identification. China’s police force already holds the world’s biggest national database of more than 1 billion faces, captured for the national ID card system. Depending on the quality of these photos, they can be matched to people posing for a face scan.
The industry is beginning to pay attention to the complaints. SenseTime announced last week that it will lead a consortium of 27 companies to help set national standards for facial recognition, under the guidance of a government standards body. “The public is increasingly paying attention to the security problems faced by this technology,” the company wrote in a social media post.
While debate over the use of facial recognition in the European Union and the U.S. is focused on the privacy threat of governments or companies identifying and tracking people, the debate in China is often framed around the threat of leaks to third parties, rather than abuses by the operators themselves.
China’s courts received their first challenge to the commercial use of face scans in October. When a zoo in Hangzhou forced season pass holders to submit to face scans for entrance, Guo Bin, a professor at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, sued the zoo in order to keep his personal information private. Face traits are “sensitive personal data,” he said in a court submission, arguing that the data could be leaked or stolen.
Most Chinese people approve of the use of facial recognition for convenience and improving security, but remain concerned about privacy abuses, according to Beijing’s Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Center, which conducted the mass survey.
The installation of an in-class facial monitoring system at China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing in September sparked widespread online criticism. As part of a new “smart campus” system, the school installed face scanners in two classrooms to track attendance and to catch students dozing, playing on their phones or talking in class. It “effectively solves the difficult problems of managing attendance and low efficiency,” the school says.
In response, China’s education ministry said the department would add restrictions and regulations on the use of facial recognition in schools, and hoped they would be “highly cautious” in using the technology.
Israeli companies like AnyVision and Elbit Systems have supplied technology to the U.S., while Ukrainian start-up Riddletag uses Amazon’s facial recognition technology to allow access to passengers in the Tbilisi subway in Georgia.
“U.S. companies, for all the lip service they pay to technology and ethics, are also building surveillance tech, and indeed supplying Chinese companies that produce it,” says Stephanie Hare, an independent researcher of facial recognition technology and ethics, and a former employee of Palantir. “This leaves everyone else with a decision: be spied on by the U.S. or by China? This point was made in the German parliament last week, and the U.S. was very upset about it, saying there can be no moral equivalence between China’s authoritarianism and U.S. values.”
Meanwhile, China’s surveillance industry is already moving on to the next frontier of computer image recognition: identifying people by the way they walk and trying to read their emotions.
- Intrinsic
- Advanced Grower
-
Karma Hippie
- Has bestowed Karma : 2257 times
- Received Karma : 1859 times
- Posts: 8379
- Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 10:51 am
Tokalot VI
will that work?
More,,,
Mass surveillance in China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_su ... e_in_China
Facial Recognition And Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China's 'Surveillance State
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/95351562 ... llance-sta
More,,,
Mass surveillance in China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_su ... e_in_China
Facial Recognition And Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China's 'Surveillance State
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/95351562 ... llance-sta
- rSin
- Karma Hippie
- Custom Title: world where everone gets
- Location: neck deep
- Has bestowed Karma : 1668 times
- Received Karma : 1064 times
- Posts: 7295
- Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:12 pm
Tokalot VI
thanks.
im searching for one of the outrages of the first bush2 administration when they dropped export restriction on facial reconigtion software
im searching for one of the outrages of the first bush2 administration when they dropped export restriction on facial reconigtion software
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
- Lrus007
- Advanced Grower
-
Karma God
- Custom Title: hash and oil maker
- Has bestowed Karma : 1300 times
- Received Karma : 1968 times
- Posts: 3275
- Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:21 pm
Tokalot VI
odd lucky day i guess. i go to store got lotto and bread but had no milk.
i drive to another store doing 70 on a frontage road. see a cop hidden
somewhat in a driveway. well i drive a retired cop car he did not pull out.
thought damn i am lucky. go into other store and get my milk. get into car
and a canadian knocks on my window. i open door and ask whats up. he said
his car is messed up needs $100 to get fam home. then takes off a gold necklace
and 2 gold rings i look there all 18k. he then says if i got $120 he will give them
to me. i look them over well really heavy so i say ok. he god blessed me a bunch.
get home and plop it all onto scale 92 grams so over 3 oz of gold. also offered a
rolex for more. i said no he blessed me more and then i went home. i did look at
the rolex was real i have one so know how the 2nd hand moves was real.
guess my lucky day. hope lotto is a winner lol
i drive to another store doing 70 on a frontage road. see a cop hidden
somewhat in a driveway. well i drive a retired cop car he did not pull out.
thought damn i am lucky. go into other store and get my milk. get into car
and a canadian knocks on my window. i open door and ask whats up. he said
his car is messed up needs $100 to get fam home. then takes off a gold necklace
and 2 gold rings i look there all 18k. he then says if i got $120 he will give them
to me. i look them over well really heavy so i say ok. he god blessed me a bunch.
get home and plop it all onto scale 92 grams so over 3 oz of gold. also offered a
rolex for more. i said no he blessed me more and then i went home. i did look at
the rolex was real i have one so know how the 2nd hand moves was real.
guess my lucky day. hope lotto is a winner lol
My therapist says I am a habitual liar and an attention seeker, therefore nothing I say/write is true and under no circumstances should I be believed nor held accountable for anything I say. all photo's are paintings
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
- rSin
- Karma Hippie
- Custom Title: world where everone gets
- Location: neck deep
- Has bestowed Karma : 1668 times
- Received Karma : 1064 times
- Posts: 7295
- Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2010 8:12 pm
Tokalot VI
wow nice!
i got offered some rings but wouldnt take it.
gave the guy 20 bucks though
i got offered some rings but wouldnt take it.
gave the guy 20 bucks though
the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured.
- Lrus007
- Advanced Grower
-
Karma God
- Custom Title: hash and oil maker
- Has bestowed Karma : 1300 times
- Received Karma : 1968 times
- Posts: 3275
- Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:21 pm
Tokalot VI
know a lot about gold. so the tests began. 1 did not stick
to a magnet good sign. failed the drop in water test.
next i did a scratch test. is a white aluminum looking
base metal. under the plating. i knew before that because
was hard to scratch with a scribe. 20x loop could see the
base metal. next was to grab nitric acid from shed. but
did not need to. is plated i got taken for $120
to a magnet good sign. failed the drop in water test.
next i did a scratch test. is a white aluminum looking
base metal. under the plating. i knew before that because
was hard to scratch with a scribe. 20x loop could see the
base metal. next was to grab nitric acid from shed. but
did not need to. is plated i got taken for $120
My therapist says I am a habitual liar and an attention seeker, therefore nothing I say/write is true and under no circumstances should I be believed nor held accountable for anything I say. all photo's are paintings
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
- Lrus007
- Advanced Grower
-
Karma God
- Custom Title: hash and oil maker
- Has bestowed Karma : 1300 times
- Received Karma : 1968 times
- Posts: 3275
- Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:21 pm
Tokalot VI
SEATTLE (AP) — Cannabis regulators have halted operations at several outdoor pot farms and processing facilities on a stretch of former fruit orchards in north-central Washington state after testing found high levels of chemicals related to a dangerous pesticide used decades ago.
The sweeping action announced Thursday night by the state Liquor and Cannabis Board renewed concerns about pesticides in marijuana and put dozens of people at least temporarily out of work just as they were preparing for spring planting.
“We are very concerned about the jobs and businesses, but we felt we needed to get a message out to our licensees and to take action for public safety,” said board spokesperson Brian Smith.
Over the last several months, officials collected samples from grow operations and processors along a nearly 5-mile (8-kilometer) stretch of the Okanogan River north of Brewster, a region of former orchards where fruit growers used the cancer-causing pesticide DDT before the U.S. banned it in 1972.
Marijuana growers in the area are now dealing with the legacy of soil contamination at the orchards. The results of tests at seven licensees showed high levels of DDE, a chemical that remains when DDT breaks down. Regulators decided to issue “administrative holds” on 16 producer licenses and two processing licenses in the area, forcing them to cease operations until further notice.
It wasn’t clear how many businesses were affected, because each one can hold multiple licenses.
One of the shuttered businesses, large-scale grower Walden Cannabis, advertises its cannabis as “sustainably sungrown” and “pesticide-free,” but its plants absorbed contaminants from the soil which then wound up in its products.
“Orchards used DDT for a generation, and that caused widespread contamination throughout the Pacific Northwest and the whole country, really,” said Walden Chief Executive Anders Taylor. “I’m still trying to process what this means. Financially, it just ruins me. I’ll be not only out of business — I’m going to lose my house, lose my farm and have to lay off my employees.”
Taylor said there are seven licensed grow operations on his property as well as processing operations, with roughly 50 workers in all.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies have shown that women with high amounts of DDE in their blood were more likely to give birth prematurely or to have a baby with a wheeze.
However, studies have focused on ingestion of the chemical, such as by eating fruit contaminated with pesticide residue; less is known about the effects of inhaling DDE.
Much of the marijuana grown in the area was sold wholesale to other processors. The Liquor Control Board said it is working with the growers and processors to identify which products the tainted cannabis wound up in so they can be tested off the shelf. Officials also asked affected companies to issue recalls.
Cannabis is known for its strong ability to remove contaminants from soil, and it has been studied for use in environmental cleanup. The levels of contaminants can be especially high in marijuana extracts and concentrates.
Due to marijuana’s illegal status under federal law, states have largely come up with their own rules about pesticide testing for their cannabis markets, said Gillian Schauer, executive director of the Cannabis Regulators Association, which includes cannabis officials from 35 U.S. states and territories.
There is wide variety among the states about which pesticides are regulated and what their tolerance levels are; it was unknown how many require testing for legacy pesticides or their components, such as DDE.
Regulators in Vermont early this year pulled pesticide-contaminated pot from five retail stores after a customer reported feeling sick, and Nevada officials issued an advisory about widely available products possibly being tainted with an unapproved pesticide.
Over the years, Washington has halted the operations or destroyed product in dozens of cases where cannabis tested above accepted levels for pesticides, but those have involved the recent spraying of unapproved pesticides. This is believed to be the first time the Liquor and Cannabis Board has issued an administrative hold related to the legacy use of pesticides, and it is the first time it has issued a hold covering an entire geographic area rather than an isolated business, the board said in an email.
Washington was one of the first two states, along with Colorado, to legalize the use and sale of cannabis by adults in 2012.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board has long conducted random tests for pesticides on products, including DDE, but they did not require producers to send in samples to state-certified labs for mandatory pesticide testing until last year. Washington was the only state with legal medical and recreational marijuana that had not already done so.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board has long conducted random tests for pesticides on products, including DDE, but they did not require producers to send in samples to state-certified labs for mandatory pesticide testing until last year. Washington was the only state with legal medical and recreational marijuana that had not already done so.
good reason to grow your own still
The sweeping action announced Thursday night by the state Liquor and Cannabis Board renewed concerns about pesticides in marijuana and put dozens of people at least temporarily out of work just as they were preparing for spring planting.
“We are very concerned about the jobs and businesses, but we felt we needed to get a message out to our licensees and to take action for public safety,” said board spokesperson Brian Smith.
Over the last several months, officials collected samples from grow operations and processors along a nearly 5-mile (8-kilometer) stretch of the Okanogan River north of Brewster, a region of former orchards where fruit growers used the cancer-causing pesticide DDT before the U.S. banned it in 1972.
Marijuana growers in the area are now dealing with the legacy of soil contamination at the orchards. The results of tests at seven licensees showed high levels of DDE, a chemical that remains when DDT breaks down. Regulators decided to issue “administrative holds” on 16 producer licenses and two processing licenses in the area, forcing them to cease operations until further notice.
It wasn’t clear how many businesses were affected, because each one can hold multiple licenses.
One of the shuttered businesses, large-scale grower Walden Cannabis, advertises its cannabis as “sustainably sungrown” and “pesticide-free,” but its plants absorbed contaminants from the soil which then wound up in its products.
“Orchards used DDT for a generation, and that caused widespread contamination throughout the Pacific Northwest and the whole country, really,” said Walden Chief Executive Anders Taylor. “I’m still trying to process what this means. Financially, it just ruins me. I’ll be not only out of business — I’m going to lose my house, lose my farm and have to lay off my employees.”
Taylor said there are seven licensed grow operations on his property as well as processing operations, with roughly 50 workers in all.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studies have shown that women with high amounts of DDE in their blood were more likely to give birth prematurely or to have a baby with a wheeze.
However, studies have focused on ingestion of the chemical, such as by eating fruit contaminated with pesticide residue; less is known about the effects of inhaling DDE.
Much of the marijuana grown in the area was sold wholesale to other processors. The Liquor Control Board said it is working with the growers and processors to identify which products the tainted cannabis wound up in so they can be tested off the shelf. Officials also asked affected companies to issue recalls.
Cannabis is known for its strong ability to remove contaminants from soil, and it has been studied for use in environmental cleanup. The levels of contaminants can be especially high in marijuana extracts and concentrates.
Due to marijuana’s illegal status under federal law, states have largely come up with their own rules about pesticide testing for their cannabis markets, said Gillian Schauer, executive director of the Cannabis Regulators Association, which includes cannabis officials from 35 U.S. states and territories.
There is wide variety among the states about which pesticides are regulated and what their tolerance levels are; it was unknown how many require testing for legacy pesticides or their components, such as DDE.
Regulators in Vermont early this year pulled pesticide-contaminated pot from five retail stores after a customer reported feeling sick, and Nevada officials issued an advisory about widely available products possibly being tainted with an unapproved pesticide.
Over the years, Washington has halted the operations or destroyed product in dozens of cases where cannabis tested above accepted levels for pesticides, but those have involved the recent spraying of unapproved pesticides. This is believed to be the first time the Liquor and Cannabis Board has issued an administrative hold related to the legacy use of pesticides, and it is the first time it has issued a hold covering an entire geographic area rather than an isolated business, the board said in an email.
Washington was one of the first two states, along with Colorado, to legalize the use and sale of cannabis by adults in 2012.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board has long conducted random tests for pesticides on products, including DDE, but they did not require producers to send in samples to state-certified labs for mandatory pesticide testing until last year. Washington was the only state with legal medical and recreational marijuana that had not already done so.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board has long conducted random tests for pesticides on products, including DDE, but they did not require producers to send in samples to state-certified labs for mandatory pesticide testing until last year. Washington was the only state with legal medical and recreational marijuana that had not already done so.
good reason to grow your own still
My therapist says I am a habitual liar and an attention seeker, therefore nothing I say/write is true and under no circumstances should I be believed nor held accountable for anything I say. all photo's are paintings
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
People are born with the instinct to fight against their own death, to struggle with their last breath against even the most unavoidable and uncompromising ends.
- Solid Gold Butt Plug
- Stackin' Karma Yo
- Custom Title: SLIP IT IN
- Has bestowed Karma : 3 times
- Received Karma : 137 times
- Posts: 349
- Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2023 1:27 am
Tokalot VI
I was going to tell you that gold is fake as it comes, but then I read your second post.
Nacho Cheese Doritos® Locos Tacos
$1.79 for a limited time only at Taco Bell
$1.79 for a limited time only at Taco Bell