How to read a certificate of analysis (COA)

If everything appears to be in order with the header, we can move on to the actual cannabinoid profile. This is the section of the COA that will tell you what is in the product. Please note, most COAs will read contents in milligrams per gram. In the case of tinctures, 1ml of tincture will weigh about 1 gram. Also, the values referenced will be pulled from the Result (%) and the Result (mg/g) columns. The LOQ (%) column means limit of quantitation which the smallest amount detectable by the laboratory’s equipment.

First on our list, let’s look at how to make sure the product is compliant on THC content. Legally, CBD products must contain <0.3% THC. This will ensure the product will not be falsely identified as a marijuana derivative or make you feel “high”. The line on a COA that will show you this is Delta 9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta 9THC), sometimes listed as “∆9 THC”. This lab we are viewing shows this particular tincture contains 0.14% THC, which is less than half the legal limit.

The “Cannabidiol (CBD)” line will show us how much CBD is present. In this COA, the tincture contains 39mg/g of CBD. Levels of minor cannabinoids (CBC, CBN, etc.) will vary in any given product as they are not typically present in meaningful quantities in the hemp plant.

Calculating Tincture Contents

So how does the 39mg/g of CBD translate to the 1000mg claimed on the label of this product? Using what we learned earlier, 1g of tincture is equivalent to 1ml. If this tincture contains 39mg per milliliter, we just need to multiply it by the size of the bottle. The header tells us this is a 30ml bottle claiming 1000mg CBD total. 39mg multiplied by the 30ml bottle is 1170mg in the bottle, which is 170mg more than promised!

Calculating Topical Contents

Topicals can be a bit more confusing to calculate, however the process is identical to that of a tincture. Let’s use Extract Labs Muscle Cream as an example.

We know from our learnings in the previous section that this report tells us this Muscle Cream contains 18.78mg/g of CBD. But since the cream isn’t measured in milliliters like the tincture, how can we know it contains the 1500mg total promised in the title of the lab? With items like creams or edibles, we need to know how much the product weighs to perform our calculations!

The label of this product states that it contains 84g of cream total. Since the lab report analyzed a sample of the completed cream, we can take the 18.78mg/g of CBD from our COA and multiply it by the 84g of cream in each container. This tells us that each container of cream will contain 1577.5mg of CBD!

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