You thought we only had three amazing, little known uses of hemp!? Below are three more astonishing uses of industrial hemp:
Soil conditioning
Industrial hemp cleans soil. And we mean really cleans soil. Known as phytoremediation, the industrial hemp plant possesses the ability to draw out harmful contaminants from soils. The “contaminated” hemp plants can then be cut down, removed, and the process repeated. Hemp’s cleaning abilities were put to the test in the 1990s as scientists planted hemp in fields near the heavily contaminated site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. German scientists confirmed the Chernobyl experiments by demonstrating hemp could extract lead, cadmium, and nickel from soils. Note to self: be careful ingesting hemp products unless you know it is grown cleanly.
Biofortification
You are what you eat. There is a micro-nutrient deficiency in many developing countries. As explained above, hemp’s phytoremediation properties make it phenomenal at absorbing various particles in soils. This means that hemp can actually be used to absorb good nutrients from soils resulting in crops fortified with essential nutrients. A recent study demonstrated that hemp could absorb selenium from soils. Selenium is necessary for numerous physiological functions such as thyroid function, immune system response, fertility, and antioxidant function. Hemp therefore presents an extremely promising manner to feed and nourish on a large scale.
Legal and historical documents
You may have heard that at least one of the drafts of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. While this claim is hotly contested, the truth is that a massive percentage of the paper used in the world was, in fact, made from hemp fiber. Some conservatively estimate that 75% of the paper derived from hemp by the late 1800s. We do know Thomas Jefferson authored the final product on parchment, but many other historically significant documents were written on hemp paper including: Magna Carta, King James Bible, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Mark Twain’s works, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, and many more.
