How to Properly Consume Concentrates | Vaporization
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Properly Consuming Concentrates
Although dabbing isn't an unpopular activity in the United States by any means, many individuals who partake in the (sometimes daily) ritual of vaporization don't actually know how to safely consume their concentrates.
In this post, we are going to help you reduce long term risk of using concentrates, and also explain the different ways to consume them.
Please note that we will not be going over vape cartridges in this post.
Popular Methods to Consume Concentrates
First, we will talk about a few popular ways to consume concentrates AKA "dabs". The top 3 ways concentrates can be taken is orally, vaporization, or even mixed with another substance and smoked. All 3 of these methods have the potential to add risk to your health, but some worse than others.
Taking concentrates orally is usually considered one of the safest and easiest methods to get it into your body and experience the desired affects, it requires no extra tools or accessories unless you intend on adding it into an edible product or decarbing your product. Next, you could vaporize your concentrates using some sort of heated medium like a water pipe, collector, e-nail, or electronic vaporization device. This is the method we will be focusing on the most in this post as it is the most popular way to use concentrates. You could also mix your concentrates with another product, like dry herb used for smoking, and smoke your concentrate. This way is probably one of the least recommended methods of consumption due to high heat and potential to form carcinogens.
Reduce Risk from Consuming Concentrates
Reducing risk while vaporizing is actually very easy and there are quite a few tips and tricks to help you out. Some extra tools or accessories may be recommended.
The first thing you can do to reduce risk to your body while vaporizing concentrates is to get an appropriate medium for dabbing. This would consist of quartz, ceramic, and titanium. There are other mediums out there but these 3 would be some of the safest as they can retain heat, don't cause carcinogens and don't have a high chance of cracking or breaking due to high temperatures.
Another step you could take to reduce risk is to lower the temperature of the medium you are using to inhale or "smoke" from. This means keeping the heat of your banger, collector, e-rig within a certain range to prevent carcinogens like benzene from forming. It is recommended to keep your dabbing temperatures below 700°F to prevent this phenomenon from occurring. To do this, you can buy a simple handheld thermometer to check the heat, get an e-nail or e-rig with a temperature setting, or even buy a specific tool used solely for reading the temperature of your chosen medium.
Next, you could try obtaining higher quality concentrates. Some concentrates can come with foreign material or solvents that could potentially contribute to additional harm being done to your body. Always try to obtain your products from the most reliable source possible.
One of the last recommendations we are going to make is to use a quality "dab-tool" for scooping your concentrates. It can be dangerous to use low-quality and cheap metals for dabbing as they can come in contact with your heated medium and release harmful chemicals. Although this may be negligible, it is better to be safe than sorry. We recommend Grade 2 Titanium or glass as a dab tool, as they may be able to withstand higher temperatures without releasing any traces of unwanted chemicals.