Women in Science: Sara Sekerak navigates new cannabis lab legislation

Sekerak leading a presentation about cannabis testing methods, protocols, and quality standards.

Sara Sekerak is working in uncharted territory. She is part of a new task force mandated by Washington’s Legislature to define scientific standards for our state’s cannabis laboratories. How does someone end up with such a high-pressure job? It takes a lot of lab experience, a keen eye for quality assurance, and a thorough background in ensuring products comply with regulatory standards. Sara shares more about what led her to this important new position on the task force in this month’s Women in Science interview.


Sara's job at Ecology

Sekerak performing size reduction of a study product in the Product Testing
Prep Room. Pre-processing of products is a necessary step in producing
samples for lab analysis.

Right now, I am the lead chemist for the Cannabis Science Task Force, but the road to my current position has been a winding one. Before I joined the Task Force, I was a Product Testing project manager. In that position, most of my work supported the Children’s Safe Product Act.

During the past two years, I managed a study of school supplies marketed to children ages 12 and under. We looked for lead and cadmium because those metals have both federal and state limits. School supplies are not explicitly covered in the Children’s Safe Product Act, so the Attorney General’s office took a special interest in this. We worked with the Attorney General’s Office and scoped a project to meet their needs.

In May 2019, the Attorney General’s Office finalized a settlement with Amazon that our study helped substantiate. The most important outcome of this settlement is that Amazon now requires all third-party sellers of school supplies and jewelry to produce a certificate confirming that their products meet the federal requirements for lead and cadmium.

Recent work

Authoring a Cannabis Laboratory Accreditation report led me to my current position as lead chemist for the Cannabis Science Task Force. The goal of the Task Force is to work with multiple agencies, as well as scientists from the cannabis industry. We have been asked by the Legislature to provide recommendations that would help cannabis testing labs apply science-based practices and other critical elements needed for a robust accreditation.

Because there is no federal oversight for cannabis (like there is for drinking water or agricultural products), there are currently no standard methods specifically for testing cannabis. So labs are creating their own procedures and processes. Right now, each lab defines their own level of quality; the problem with this is that there is variability from one lab to the next. Our task force will meet from now to Dec. 1, 2021, and this multidisciplinary group of agencies and scientists will try to close some gaps in the labs’ processes.

Advice for future women in science

I’ve often felt like my work has been challenged or questioned. But, wherever I have gone, these challenges and questions have always motivated me to work harder. So my first piece of advice would be to not let negative comments get you down. I have worked hard to build my name and reputation to prove that I am a valuable team member. If anyone questioned my work ethic, I just worked harder to prove that I could.

Sekerak working at Manchester Environmental Laboratory.

My second piece of advice would be to never stop learning and always ask questions. In 2000, I started my first job at a lab through an internship at Manchester Environmental Laboratory. I always wanted to learn new things, so I would offer to help and job shadow everywhere I could.

From there, I worked my way up to my current position as a lead chemist, and my experience communicating with labs gave me a leg up. My diverse experiences lined me up perfectly for my current position, which requires a broad scope of knowledge.

By: Ruth Froese, Environmental Assessment Program Communications

Women in Science: Arati Kaza

Arati pre-processing children's toys for metals and phthalates.

ARATI'S JOB AT ECOLOGY

Arati Kaza is our quality assurance officer. She reviews project plans and other technical documents for the agency. She makes sure that the hard work that goes into the collection and analysis of environmental samples is defensible in court. For each project, she has to see the big picture so that every science-based report that comes out of Ecology is of the highest quality and complies with regulations.

Arati shared her most recent work , advice, and experiences.

RECENT WORK

• I have been heavily involved in making process changes to get to a paperless system for quality assurance documents. This has made the process more transparent and faster than previous processes. 
• I worked on the recent case for setting better standards for toxic metals in school supply products. Due to the great work done by the team, a major online supplier is now requiring testing results with their products to ensure safe levels of metals like lead and cadmium.
• I helped organize a Citizen Science Workshop for a non-profit for sampling phthalates in products that are used in road paints, billboards, traffic cones etc. Surprisingly, most of the products tested were free of phthalates, and now a second round of testing is in progress.

ADVICE FOR FUTURE SCIENTISTS

• Go to school and get a degree! Going to school builds that strong foundation toward working hard, asking the right questions, and finding the people with whom you share common ideas.
• Work on your communication skills; they really come in handy.
• Whenever you voice a problem, think about how you can suggest a few solutions to the problem. This encourages problem solving; you might not have the right solution every time, but you force your brain to think from different perspectives.
• There will be hardships, there will be problems, but always treat a problem as an opportunity to learn something new.

"When I was growing up, my parents always talked about how there is one thing in life that you are good at and then there is the one thing that you are passionate about," said Arati. "For me, chemistry was what I was good at, and protecting the environment was my passion. A combination of the two is what landed me at Ecology. So I would say to all you women out there, don’t give up on your passion or your area of expertise — one day those paths will cross!"

By Ruth Froese, Environmental Assessment Program Communications
Women in Science is an Ecology series produced by the Environmental Assessment Program. Stories are usually published once a month.  

Mercury waning: Online oversight reduces sales of devices containing toxic metal

By Andrew Wineke, communications manager, Hazardous Waste and Toxics Reduction Program

For centuries, mercury was used in thermometers, barometers and other measuring devices because it expands and contracts evenly with temperature and pressure changes. Unfortunately, mercury is also a potent neurotoxin that can cause damage or death even at low doses.


In 2003, Washington banned the sale of measurement devices and novelty items containing mercury. Seventeen other states and the European Union have adopted similar restrictions. And 128 countries, including the United States, signed a 2013 convention pledging to phase out use of the toxic metal.

To ensure that retailers and manufacturers complied with these restrictions, Ecology recently searched online stores for items containing mercury. These included both major retailers and specialty sellers.

Despite its toxicity, mercury is not banned everywhere. So, in order to verify whether these retailers had systems in place to prevent the sale of mercury-containing items to buyers in Washington, our product enforcement staff bought a selection of these products. Companies that sold and shipped the items to Washington were informed about our state’s laws and requirements for compliance.

The good news is that the retailers were extremely responsive. Some simply stopped selling mercury-containing items altogether. Others put measures in place to ensure they didn’t sell these items in Washington or other jurisdictions with restrictions in place.

In all, Ecology’s efforts resulted in more than 1,100 different mercury thermometers, barometers, manometers, sphygmomanometers, and other measuring devices being removed from sale.

Washington has a number of laws restricting the sale of products containing toxic chemicals like flame retardants, lead, bisphenol A, and phthalates. Ecology regularly tests consumer products to see whether manufacturers are complying with both state and federal restrictions on toxics and other reporting requirements.

You can browse our product-testing data at https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/ptdbpublicreporting/.