The other day, I was listening to the hit track “I Don’t Fuck With You” by Big Sean and E-40. As I sang along, one line piqued my interest: Big Sean’s “And you know I’m rollin weed that’s fuckin up the ozone”. This got me thinking. Was he truly fuckin up the ozone? There was only one thing I could do: sit down, crack my knuckles, and get to investigating.
Big Sean is not the first to be conscious of his impacts on the ozone layer. We’ve known about it for a while; in 1913, while analyzing the Sun’s radiation, two French physicists noticed that no radiation with a wavelength of less than 310 nm reached the Earth’s surface. They concluded that there had to be something in the atmosphere absorbing this radiation, and they were right! The ozone layer absorbs roughly 98% of the sun’s medium-frequency UV light, which is awesome for us living organisms. However, we didn’t know just how good we had it. In 1976, atmospheric researchers realized that humans’ use of chlorofluorocarbons, also known as CFCs, was rapidly depleting our atmospheric anti-skin-cancer shield.
Governments across the world took action, if slowly, and in 1987, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed. The protocol includes an international agreement to stop the production of CFCs and other harmful substances; the EPA provides a full list of these ozone-depleting substances (henceforth referred to as ODS).
Back to Big Sean’s emissions: A 2020 study published with Scientific Reports analyzed the chemical composition of both marijuana and tobacco smoke, identifying the types and concentrations of chemicals that were (presumably) released when he exhaled. The most common compounds present in marijuana smoke are alpha-humulene, 3-methylbutanenitrile, phenol, and m-cresol. Of course, several other chemicals were present, but in such small quantities that they are not worth discussing, at least for our purposes.
Cross-referencing these results with the EPA’s list of ODS gives us some good news: Big Sean was not fuckin up the ozone!! None of the most common chemicals in his exhalations have been found to be harmful to the ozone layer. However, that’s not the end of the story.
Since 2012, the market size for marijuana in the US has increased by 1800%, up to 19.4 billion dollars in 2022. This rapidly expanding industry, like just about every other market, has had serious impacts on the climate. Cannibis plants need an average of 6 gallons of water per day, and with a 150-day growing season and millions of plants across the nation, the numbers stack up quickly. It’s also an energy-intensive industry; lighting for indoor grow operations racks up huge electricity bills. But the plants themselves have their own impacts. Studies have found that cannabis plants emit large numbers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs): α-pinene, β-pinene, β-myrcene, and d-limonene, to name a few.
Here’s the kicker: these VOCs play a key role in the FORMATION of ozone. Denver County’s crop alone adds 2100 metric tons of ozone to the atmosphere per year. The ozone layer is on track to regain its pre-1980s status near the middle of the century, and who knows - cannabis plants just might help! In the end, Big Sean wasn’t fuckin up the ozone layer. He was doing his part to build it back.
sources: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63120-6#Sec2, https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/international-treaties-and-cooperation-about-protection-stratospheric-ozone, https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/ozone-depleting-substances, https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/medical-recreational-marijuana-growing-united-states/, https://jcannabisresearch.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42238-021-00090-0