It is not uncommon for industries outside cannabis to adapt their technologies to address challenges unique to this maturing sector. American Air Filter International (AFF) is one such company, bringing decades of experience in air filtration for critical environments such as pharmaceutical clean rooms, food manufacturing facilities, hospitals, and even jet fuel applications.
According to Nikki Sasher, a microbiologist and head of the Clean Air Laboratory at American Air Filter International, cannabis cultivation facilities face a host of airborne risks, with mold at the top of the list. Once mold enters a grow, the financial consequences can escalate quickly, from destroyed harvests to failed compliance tests. Beyond lost revenue, there are serious biosecurity and worker health concerns tied to inhaling mold spores. In cases where Aspergillus reaches the lower lungs, Sasher notes, the mold can colonize and continue to propagate inside the body.
In 2022, a Trulieve employee died after suffering an asthma attack linked to prolonged exposure to ground cannabis dust in her workplace. Following the incident, OSHA cited the company for failing to implement adequate dust control measures, including proper ventilation and the use of HEPA filtration on vacuum equipment.
Health officials and researchers have since identified a range of respiratory hazards common in cannabis cultivation and processing facilities. These include mold and fungi, pesticides and chemical residues, and terpenes and other volatile organic compounds. Many of these compounds create strong odors and can interact with other airborne agents to form irritants that pose both acute and long-term health risks.
These incidents present a growing safety and occupational health challenge within the rapidly expanding cannabis industry, one that is increasingly difficult to ignore.
Filtration Is Not Yet an Industry-Wide Standard
Despite these risks, comprehensive air filtration is far from universal across cannabis operations. Sasher explains that geography plays a role. Drier climates, such as Nevada, tend to experience fewer mold issues than states like Michigan, Colorado, and New York, where temperature swings and higher humidity create ideal conditions for microbial growth.
Greenhouses, in particular, present ongoing challenges due to constant water activity created by irrigation systems and plant respiration. Sasher frequently sees mold outbreaks occur in drying rooms, where freshly harvested plants retain moisture. If mold is already present in the room or circulating through the air handling system, spores can easily settle onto wet plant material. Drying rooms are typically smaller and more enclosed than other areas of a cultivation facility, making them among the highest-risk environments in the entire operation.
The use of high-tech air filtration systems has only been around for less than twenty years; some sectors still need to catch up to the standards required in food and pharmaceutical manufacturing, such as adhering to minimum efficiency ratings, change-out intervals, locations, first-in, first-out process flow, and hazard analysis.
AFF Wants Your Dirty Filters
To spark greater industry awareness around the benefits of proper air filtration, American Air Filter International has launched a free filter-testing program for cannabis cultivators. Through the initiative, growers are invited to submit used air filters from their facilities, allowing AFF to analyze real-world contamination and build a clearer picture of airborne risks across the sector.
According to Sasher, the filters are evaluated for efficiency, resistance, and pressure drop, as well as downstream mold capture to determine what is circulating in process-facing air. AFF also uses scanning electron microscopy to examine the filter media at the microscopic level, revealing how particulate matter, such as mold spores, dust, and plant material, accumulates and impacts performance over time.
To expand the scope of the research, AFF has partnered with Dr. Alison Justice of the Cannabis Research Center. Together, the organizations are collecting data that will help quantify air quality risks and translate them into practical guidance for cultivators.
Exposed Areas in Cultivation Facilities
Modern cultivation facilities rely on complex climate control systems that include HVAC units, humidifiers, and dehumidifiers, each requiring filters with different efficiency ratings. Sasher notes that many of the filters currently in use fall below recommended standards, a gap AFF hopes to validate through its research partnership with the Cannabis Research Center. The goal is to help growers better understand which efficiency ratings are needed in different parts of the facility to meaningfully reduce risk.
Mold spores, Sasher emphasizes, are ubiquitous. Air filtration is only one engineering control among many, alongside practices such as room fogging and sanitation protocols. Once mold is introduced into a facility, it can be extremely difficult to eliminate.
One uniquely cannabis-specific challenge is the presence of trichomes. These microscopic, sticky particles easily become airborne during cultivation and processing, where they accumulate on filters, restrict airflow, and degrade filtration performance. As part of the testing program, AFF is evaluating how sticky versus non-sticky particulate matter affects filter lifespan and efficiency. The findings could help growers better determine optimal change-out schedules and identify operational factors that accelerate filter failure.
For Sasher, biosecurity is the most compelling reason to invest in proper air filtration. Through its collaboration with Dr. Justice, AFF aims to merge air quality science with cultivation expertise to produce data-driven research that the industry currently lacks. The partnership is focused on developing practical guidance around filtration standards, airflow management, preventative maintenance, and standard operating procedures, areas where formal benchmarks are still largely absent.
Looking ahead, the research team plans to identify pilot cultivation sites where filtration can be evaluated directly within active grow environments. By measuring conditions before and after filtration upgrades, they hope to quantify the impact on contamination levels and overall plant health. Sasher points to similar work in agricultural settings, where improved air filtration reduced livestock mortality rates by double digits, delivering measurable economic gains.
While cannabis-specific results will take time, Sasher believes the approach has the potential to deliver actionable insights that the industry can implement quickly. Even cultivators who are not using AFF products, she says, will be able to apply the findings to strengthen biosecurity, protect workers, and reduce costly crop losses.
Beyond Particulates: Managing Odors and Emissions
While much of the focus in cultivation facilities centers on particulate filtration, Sasher emphasizes that molecular, carbon-based filtration plays an equally important role in cannabis operations. These systems are designed to scrub gases and volatile compounds from outgoing air, an increasingly critical requirement as cultivation and extraction facilities operate closer to residential and commercial neighborhoods, and as consumption lounges come online.
In cannabis, terpenes are responsible for strong odors, as well as gases released during extraction processes that use hydrocarbons such as butane. These gas-phase emissions are subject to strict environmental and safety standards, particularly in regulated markets where operators are required to control odors and limit volatile organic compound emissions.
American Air Filter International addresses this challenge through a dual filtration approach. Pleated particulate filters support plant health and worker safety by capturing airborne contaminants within the facility, while carbon-based molecular filtration systems target gas-phase pollutants before exhaust is released outdoors. Together, these systems help operators remain compliant with local regulations while reducing environmental impact.
Sasher also points to a key differentiator in AFF’s gas-phase filtration program: the ability to test and monitor the remaining life and gas-holding capacity of carbon filters. By measuring remaining adsorption capacity, AFF provides operators with data-driven guidance on when to replace filters. This reduces guesswork, prevents performance failures, and supports more predictable maintenance schedules.
As regulators, communities, and workers place increasing scrutiny on air quality, molecular filtration is becoming a necessary extension of cultivation and extraction infrastructure rather than an option. As the industry inches toward rescheduling and ultimately descheduling, GMP-certified facilities will be required, and with that comes clean-air filtration.
CONTACT NIKKI SASHER IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FREE AIR FILTER STUDY: nsasher@aafintl.com
Listen to Nikki Sasher’s full interview on the Innovating Cannabis Podcast.
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