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When you smoke pot, you might also be smoking a glut of nasty chemicals. A new study published in the Journal of Toxicology found that up to 70 percent of the pesticides on a given marijuana bud can transfer to the inhaled smoke.

Researcher Jeffrey Raber, a chemist who runs a medical cannabis testing company in Pasadena, Calif. called the Werc Shop, conducted the study inspired by prior research conducted on cigarettes, which showed that smokers could inhale compounds present on tobacco.

Raber presented his findings at a talk titled, “Medical Cannabis Quality Control in California: Keeping a Weed Free Garden,”at Humboldt State University in November as part of a lecture series put on by Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research. The talk focused in part on the contaminants found in cannabis smoke, as well as a number of other topics, which an article in Eureka’s

Times-Standard categorized as “everything from erroneous branding at dispensaries and testing procedures to the various components of marijuana and the ways to determine the best strains to treat specific ailments.”

Raber’s lecture ultimately left a message of caution for the marijuana buyer. 

“Because this is currently quasi legal if not illegal in some places, and people are motivated to be making a commercial amount of money in a small amount of space, with no regulations and no quality control, anything that can be brought out to the market will go out to the market,” Raber said.

Raber noted that within California any use of pesticides on cannabis plants is illegal. However, as cannabis cultivation also remains illegal on the federal level, as well as in California state aside from specified medical grows, there is no oversight in place to regulate what is sprayed on cannabis plants. Further, cannabis growers can’t legally apply to be certified organic when they aren’t using pesticides or other chemicals. Without independent laboratory testing like Raber’s, there is no way to tell whether or not a bud is covered in toxic chemicals.