Kratom Lab Testing

What is a certificate of analysis?

A COA is one lab’s written result for one sample of material.

It carries a sample number, the date the sample came in, the date the result went out, the methods used, and the findings against whatever limits that lab applies. Somebody paid for it. That’s usually the seller or the seller’s supplier. It is normal, and it’s worth knowing.

A COA is a receipt for a test. It is not a grade, a rating, or a seal. Nobody scores it. Nobody ranks it against anyone else’s. It records what one sample read on one day.

What does a kratom lab test cover?

Most kratom lab reports cover three panels. Alkaloids, heavy metals, and microbials.

The alkaloid panel measures how much of the named compounds the leaf holds. Usually mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, sometimes three to five more. Kratom leaf holds far more compounds than any panel reports, and what those numbers mean is covered on our page about kratom alkaloids.

The heavy metals panel looks for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury, and often nickel too. The microbial panel looks for total plate count, yeast and mold, E. coli and Salmonella.

Three panels is the working industry standard. A report carrying only alkaloid figures has answered one question out of three.

Why is lead on the panel?

Heavy metals are on the panel because a federal agency found them in kratom already on the shelf.

The FDA tested 30 kratom products and published the results product by product in April 2019. It found lead and nickel above safe exposure for daily oral intake. The highest nickel reading in the table was 29,000 nanograms per gram. The agency said long-term heavy metal exposure can damage the nervous system and the kidneys, among other harms.

The reason is farming rather than foul play. Kratom is a forest tree. A tree takes up what sits in the soil around it. Where the soil carries metals, so does the leaf.

Our own reports have never shown a heavy metals problem from the region our leaf comes from. The panel runs on every delivery anyway. A clean record is the reason to keep checking, not a reason to stop.

Why is Salmonella on the panel?

Microbial testing is on the panel because kratom has made people sick in large numbers.

The CDC counted 199 people infected across 41 states. The illnesses began between January 2017 and May 2018. Fifty people went to hospital. Nobody died. Investigators found 85 different DNA fingerprints of Salmonella in kratom samples, and they never found one common brand or supplier behind it. In April 2018 the FDA ordered a recall of powdered kratom held by one company. The agency called it the first mandatory food recall it had ever issued.

Dried leaf is a raw farm product. Nothing cooks it between the tree and your kitchen. That’s the same reason flour, pepper and dried coconut have all carried outbreaks, and it’s why this panel exists.

Why do two labs return two different numbers?

The same material sent to two labs comes back with two different alkaloid figures.

We didn’t believe that when we started, so we tested it. One kilogram of the same powder went to four labs. Three different numbers came back. Nothing was wrong with any of them.

There is no industry standard method for testing kratom. Each lab sets up its own extraction, its own machine calibration, and its own reference sample. Small differences in any of those move the result. The leaf moves the number too, and that side of it sits on the alkaloids page.

What that means for reading a report is narrow and useful. Read an alkaloid figure as a reading rather than a fact. Compare reports from one lab over time, because that comparison holds. One vendor’s figure against another vendor’s figure, from two different labs, tells you very little.

How do you match a report to your bag?

A report means something only when you can tie it to the batch you bought.

That chain has three parts. A number printed on your package. A report carrying the same number. And a way to reach that report without asking anyone. Break any of the three and what is left is a picture of a document.

Most of what goes wrong here is ordinary rather than devious. A report carrying no batch number. A report you can only get by emailing and waiting. A report for a batch that is not the one in your kitchen. None of those tells you anything about what you own.

What counts as a batch?

Nobody upstream agrees on what a batch is, which is why the word carries less than it looks like it carries.

Farms harvest, dry and mill without stopping, adding to stock that’s already sitting there. A shipment leaves when a shipment leaves. There is no moment where a farm draws a line and calls the material behind it a lot.

So we define a batch by delivery, because the ocean crossing is where our risk sits. Weeks in a container. Humidity. A bag torn in handling. Every delivery is tested before any of it goes up for sale, and every report behind that is published on our page of lab tested kratom results.

That definition is ours rather than the industry’s. When you read a batch number on somebody else’s package, you’re reading their definition of the word, and it may not be a delivery.

What can’t a lab report tell you?

A clean report doesn’t tell you the leaf is good.

It tests what it tests. Nothing on a COA grades leaf maturity, drying, freshness or milling. Nothing on it tells you this batch matches the last one you liked, which is its own subject and sits on our page about kratom batch variation. And past a matching batch number, nothing on it proves the material tested is the material you got.

What a report does is rule things out. Metals above a limit. Bacteria that shouldn’t be there. An alkaloid figure well outside what the product usually reads. That is a filter, and it’s a good one. It isn’t a verdict. What a report rules out is worth ruling out. Everything past that, you learn by ordering once.