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Smoking Around Your Plants
I found the topic on smoking around your plants interesting. Here's a bit of scientific perspective:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-015-0298-x
A study was conducted on peppermint plants exposed to nicotine in various forms, including test plants that were exposed to fumigated cigarette smoke for 2 hours, then mulched up and tested.
The conclusion from the study:
"Conclusion
For the first time, we have shown that peppermint plants take up nicotine from contaminated soils, and the resulting nicotine concentrations are several times higher than the maximum residue level set by the European authorities. Moreover, tremendously elevated nicotine levels were also detected after fumigation with cigarette smoke.
These results suggest that the widespread occurrence of nicotine in medicinal, spice and food plants may, at least in part, be due to exogenous nicotine sources. However, all the peppermint plants analysed in this study, including the untreated controls, contained minor amounts of the alkaloid, which suggested that peppermint plants may be able to synthesise nicotine endogenously. This assumption is supported by our finding that the Mentha plants are also able to metabolise the exogenous applied alkaloid, a process that is most likely based on a putative turnover of endogenously synthesised compounds.
In addition to the nutritional aspects, these results also demonstrate that a certain alkaloid could be translocated from one plant after its death to another plant species, even though it has no direct functional relevance. These coherences will affect the way we define allelopathy. Up to now, only the transfer of “functional substances” i.e. those, which have a certain impact on other plants, e.g. by inhibiting their growth or germination, had been considered and described by allelopathy (e.g. Seigler, 2006). In contrast, the transfer of all the substances, which naturally are leached out from plant litter into living plants never had been taken into account. Such horizontal transfers of natural products may give insights into hitherto unexplained processes, e.g. the beneficial effects of crop rotations or the cocultivation of certain vegetables."
BUT, before the conclusion, the study talks about the observed deterioration of nicotine from the initial samples over time:
"As found in the mulching experiments, the initial nicotine concentration in the fumigated peppermint plants decreased drastically as time progressed. One week after treatment, only one third of the initial nicotine content was left. This decrease in the fumigated plants corresponded to the decline of the nicotine levels in the mulched plants. Again, there are two possibilities: the nicotine remained on the surface of the leaves and simply evaporated over time, or the nicotine was taken up into the peppermint leaves and subsequently metabolised. Further freeze-drying experiments revealed that also after lyophilisation, nearly all nicotine remained in the material. This indicates a localisation of the alkaloid within the plant tissue. Therefore, the observed decline of the nicotine levels points to a metabolisation of nicotine, as it also was deduced for the mulched plants (see above). Yet, further experiments are necessary to verify this assumption."
Step outside the cannabis box; there's a good bit of evidence showing wildfire smoke negatively affecting both stomatal and biochemical function, resulting in significant reductions in photosynthesis in plants exposed to it. Here's a snippet from another article found here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfr/2010/438930/
"Physically, smoke production can lead to high-vapor pressure deficits that can trigger stomatal closure [8]. Chemically, over 100 compounds have been identified in smoke [9]. Of those that have been identified, many are known to have physiologically effects on plants, including NO2 [10], CO2, SO2, and O3 [11]. O3 has been linked to the destruction of chlorophyll [12] and has also been shown to inhibit the K+ channels that regulate guard cell function and in turn controls stomatal opening [13]. SO2 reduces stomatal conductance [14], inhibits photosynthetic oxygen evolution and electron transport, and inactivates Calvin-cycle enzymes [15–17]. When combined, NO2 and SO2 mixtures have shown to additively inhibit photosynthesis [18]. Long-term exposures to NO2 and SO2 show subsequent reductions in superoxide dismutase and glutathione reductase [19], which are major antioxidant enzymes in plants [19, 20]. The disabling of antioxidant enzyme function in conjunction with high levels of ozone, a powerful pro-oxidant, may promote oxidative stress during extended smoke exposure."
I've yet to find it, but there's allegedly another study showing the effects of 30 minutes of daily cigarette smoke exposure reducing the leaf count on plants vs the control plants.
We know that cannabis is an amazing bio accumulator (or hyper accumulator,) meaning it very easily absorbs things around it in the environment and soil. It stands to reason (scientifically) that smoking around your plants is causing them to absorb whatever chemicals are in that smoke. How detrimental that is, is probably more dependent on the concentration and frequency, but general rule of thumb is "don't smoke around your plants," even if it's cannabis.
Will it kill your plants by smoking a joint or cigarette around them? Probably not.
Will it cause all sorts of issues and problems with your grow? Debatable.
Are there some effects happening to the plant that correlate to smoke exposure? Probably.
Is the plant accumulating chemicals from that smoke exposure? Absolutely.
But how much, at what rate, how much evaporates from the surface of the leaves naturally over time, how much metabolizes within the plant itself over time?
I found the topic on smoking around your plants interesting. Here's a bit of scientific perspective:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-015-0298-x
A study was conducted on peppermint plants exposed to nicotine in various forms, including test plants that were exposed to fumigated cigarette smoke for 2 hours, then mulched up and tested.
The conclusion from the study:
"Conclusion
For the first time, we have shown that peppermint plants take up nicotine from contaminated soils, and the resulting nicotine concentrations are several times higher than the maximum residue level set by the European authorities. Moreover, tremendously elevated nicotine levels were also detected after fumigation with cigarette smoke.
These results suggest that the widespread occurrence of nicotine in medicinal, spice and food plants may, at least in part, be due to exogenous nicotine sources. However, all the peppermint plants analysed in this study, including the untreated controls, contained minor amounts of the alkaloid, which suggested that peppermint plants may be able to synthesise nicotine endogenously. This assumption is supported by our finding that the Mentha plants are also able to metabolise the exogenous applied alkaloid, a process that is most likely based on a putative turnover of endogenously synthesised compounds.
In addition to the nutritional aspects, these results also demonstrate that a certain alkaloid could be translocated from one plant after its death to another plant species, even though it has no direct functional relevance. These coherences will affect the way we define allelopathy. Up to now, only the transfer of “functional substances” i.e. those, which have a certain impact on other plants, e.g. by inhibiting their growth or germination, had been considered and described by allelopathy (e.g. Seigler, 2006). In contrast, the transfer of all the substances, which naturally are leached out from plant litter into living plants never had been taken into account. Such horizontal transfers of natural products may give insights into hitherto unexplained processes, e.g. the beneficial effects of crop rotations or the cocultivation of certain vegetables."
BUT, before the conclusion, the study talks about the observed deterioration of nicotine from the initial samples over time:
"As found in the mulching experiments, the initial nicotine concentration in the fumigated peppermint plants decreased drastically as time progressed. One week after treatment, only one third of the initial nicotine content was left. This decrease in the fumigated plants corresponded to the decline of the nicotine levels in the mulched plants. Again, there are two possibilities: the nicotine remained on the surface of the leaves and simply evaporated over time, or the nicotine was taken up into the peppermint leaves and subsequently metabolised. Further freeze-drying experiments revealed that also after lyophilisation, nearly all nicotine remained in the material. This indicates a localisation of the alkaloid within the plant tissue. Therefore, the observed decline of the nicotine levels points to a metabolisation of nicotine, as it also was deduced for the mulched plants (see above). Yet, further experiments are necessary to verify this assumption."
Step outside the cannabis box; there's a good bit of evidence showing wildfire smoke negatively affecting both stomatal and biochemical function, resulting in significant reductions in photosynthesis in plants exposed to it. Here's a snippet from another article found here: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfr/2010/438930/
"Physically, smoke production can lead to high-vapor pressure deficits that can trigger stomatal closure [8]. Chemically, over 100 compounds have been identified in smoke [9]. Of those that have been identified, many are known to have physiologically effects on plants, including NO2 [10], CO2, SO2, and O3 [11]. O3 has been linked to the destruction of chlorophyll [12] and has also been shown to inhibit the K+ channels that regulate guard cell function and in turn controls stomatal opening [13]. SO2 reduces stomatal conductance [14], inhibits photosynthetic oxygen evolution and electron transport, and inactivates Calvin-cycle enzymes [15–17]. When combined, NO2 and SO2 mixtures have shown to additively inhibit photosynthesis [18]. Long-term exposures to NO2 and SO2 show subsequent reductions in superoxide dismutase and glutathione reductase [19], which are major antioxidant enzymes in plants [19, 20]. The disabling of antioxidant enzyme function in conjunction with high levels of ozone, a powerful pro-oxidant, may promote oxidative stress during extended smoke exposure."
I've yet to find it, but there's allegedly another study showing the effects of 30 minutes of daily cigarette smoke exposure reducing the leaf count on plants vs the control plants.
We know that cannabis is an amazing bio accumulator (or hyper accumulator,) meaning it very easily absorbs things around it in the environment and soil. It stands to reason (scientifically) that smoking around your plants is causing them to absorb whatever chemicals are in that smoke. How detrimental that is, is probably more dependent on the concentration and frequency, but general rule of thumb is "don't smoke around your plants," even if it's cannabis.
Will it kill your plants by smoking a joint or cigarette around them? Probably not.
Will it cause all sorts of issues and problems with your grow? Debatable.
Are there some effects happening to the plant that correlate to smoke exposure? Probably.
Is the plant accumulating chemicals from that smoke exposure? Absolutely.
But how much, at what rate, how much evaporates from the surface of the leaves naturally over time, how much metabolizes within the plant itself over time?
Smoke pot. It probably isn't good for you either but at least you get medicated and high. I don't do combustion just Dabs and edibles.
