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E-cigarettes 'Potentially As Harmful As Tobacco Cigarettes' (uconn.edu)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A study by chemists at the University of Connecticut offers new evidence that electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, are potentially as harmful as tobacco cigarettes. Using a new low-cost, 3-D printed testing device, UConn researchers found that e-cigarettes loaded with a nicotine-based liquid are potentially as harmful as unfiltered cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage. The researchers also found that vapor from non-nicotine e-cigarettes caused as much DNA damage as filtered cigarettes, possibly due to the many chemical additives present in e-cigarette vapors. Cellular mutations caused by DNA damage can lead to cancer.
How many days until we found out they have ties to someone like Philip Morris?
'E-cigarrettes' are just a blatant drug delivery device (for nicotine, a highly addictive and poisonous substance), plain and simple, and that was blindingly obvious the first time I ever heard about them. I was surprised the FDA didn't ban them outright.
E-Cigarettes don't have any tar, which is truly nasty stuff, and that makes them better than tobacco. But I am willing to believe that they are bad for you. Nicotine is fairly nasty (and highly addictive) on its own.
I have to wonder if the simpler non-nicotine versions are anywhere near as harmful. Food-grade vegetable glycerine and peppermint oil just don't scream, "I am chemical death" to me, but what do I know.
I had a sucky sig.
Regular cigarettes don't explode
But it's the best thing you'll ever do for your health, and to not be beholden to a drug is a remarkably freeing feeling.
Vaping weed is still safe right?
Narcissists need to "feel good" though, so they will ignore it.
There are proof electronic cigarettes are at least 97% less harmfull then smoking, so please stop it publishing crap like this. I am a vaper and I do a lot of research in this subject. Do yours.
Why do people think that because the contents are vaporized it less harmful to themselves...or to others? are people truly that gullible? Having an allergy to these products, I would actually get horrible headaches from second-hand smoke of regular Cigarettes. With the E-cigarettes second hand smoke, I actually feel a sick feeling in my stomach and my head (for those who buy the line "the vapor is harmless", complete nonsense) that is a bit worse than the second hand smoke of regular cigarettes. The vapor clouds linger longer (which is worse for people like me). The idea that these things are less harmful than cigarettes is, to be polite, wishful thinking. I suspect that further research may reveal these e-cigarettes may in fact be worse long term. Certainly not (to paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide), "Mostly Harmless".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Yeah, a "chain-smoking" sort of addiction to anything is going to be bad for you, but with vapor you don't have all that tar in your lungs. Be careful of the ingredients in your e-juice so you don't get popcorn lung, and you're way better off compared to conventional cigarettes.
It's better to figure out how to get a natural high, and it's better to wake up in the morning with energy naturally instead of needing coffee, but if you're still smoking tobacco then stop today and switch to e-cigs. Your future self will thank you a million times.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Stop kidding yourselves: There's no healthy way to inhale nicotine. Give up the habit or pay the price.
This doesn't prove they are worse buddy. There have been plenty of people trying to smear them since their inception.
So far we have every reason to believe they ar vastly less deadly than cigs.
which is a byproduct of combustion. They produce a vapor fog that LOOKS like smoke, but isn't.
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Read some of the responses here. Yes, people are THAT stupid.
There is no smoke and the chemicals are propelyn-glycol and vegetable glycerin. You eat that and I don't call you stupid.
so, they should finalize the science, identifying exactly which compound does the damage.. Is it propylene glycol, or vegetable glycerin? i'm sure they can both be replaced, there exists aqueous glycerine mixture, so there is none of propylene glycol. pretty sure it can go the other way too.
I've seen numerous headlines saying "X potentially Y", is this really how these studies are conducted? "Potentially" having some property is not completely meaningless, but almost.
You smoke that and I call you stupid.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What makes you believe they are less deadly?
Is that what the people selling these are saying?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This is effectively an "in vitro" study which has scant to no applicability to the real world. The idea that because they are remotely simulating an "in vivo" situation by having some "metabolites" in their chip and some DNA present is a joke. You can put vitamin C in a test-tube and see pro-cancerous effects. Or too much oxygen.
I'm not making the claim that vaping is 100% safe but research like this needs to stay in a journal and not be swirled around in the media. Researchers have loved to publish these sorts of "findings" because they know the media will gobble it up and funding dollars might flow.
I can just see an idiot politician now making the case for greater regulation by stating "researchers have proven that vaping is as likely to cause cancer as cigarettes."
Stupid people are going to do stupid shit like this and they're going to keep looking for something equally stupid to replace it when you ban it or change it too much. Just let them do it. Let companies pick their pockets along the way and watch the dumb asses get their cancer and complain about how they didn't know the dangers or how the companies that make them shouldn't have been allowed to sell them that shit to begin with. We all know that no matter how many times you tell them about it they don't listen and if you take it away they'll go on a "Vision Quest" to find the next stupid, self destructive habit. Just let them do it and let them die.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
There is dozens of e-cigarette manufacturers and hundreds of products. As usual with e-cigarette research, they are simply lumped in together without any information on the number of devices or list of products tested. In of itself nicotine is no more dangerous then the worlds most used psychoactive drug, caffeine. I do agree on one point thou, there is a very real need for a detailed ingredient list on e-cigarette refills and a warning that the additives are untested and maybe harmefull.
They never seem to promote the stories that are in direct contradiction to this study. The Royal College of Physicians in the U.K. made a determination the e-cigarettes were at least 95% less harmful than cigarettes. No one cared. But every time this type of study, typically with terrible methodology no one pays attention to, is released, the media goes nuts. Saying something is safe isn't click bait worthy.
People don't smoke for their health, so who cares? The main thing is that when someone lights up next to you, you don't have to deal with the cigarette stink. That's really the only thing that has ever bothered me about smokers (second-hand smoke studies are flawed at best). Of course the haters still want to ban them as well, because why should people be allowed to enjoy themselves without harming anyone else?
... can we all agree that vaping is about the douchiest thing there is right now. Well, maybe second to aviator sunglasses. Although where you see one...
So you are saying that anything you can eat is obviously safe to put in your lungs? Here's a bottle of water.
I drink water, yet I know that inhaling it in any appreciable quantity will end very poorly for me. Safe to eat != safe to breath.
Fake news! This doesn't fit into my worldview so I declare it fake news!
Smoking tobacco in any form is from a bygone era.
I smoked for nearly 15 years and have been quit for 10. I am 40 now.
If you want to quit then just do it. It is up to you and only you so if you make your mind up you will quit.
Being addicted to smoke cigarettes is really 3-fold. 1 -The chemical addiction and 2 -The mental addiction and 3 -The physical addiction.
There are plenty of drugs to force you thru a period of time to get over the chemical addiction such as Chantix which blocks your receptors from absorbing nicotine. It only takes a week or 2 to free your body of the chemical addiction.
Next there is the mental addiction. If you want it it will happen, if you don't truly want it then you wont quit. Don't be weak in the mind and you will easily free yourself from this mental addiction. What I have observed is that the mental addiction will never really go away. But if you truly want to quit you very may find yourself, along with large percentage of ex-smokers, where the smell and thought of cigarette smoke actually makes you ill.
Last there is the physical addiction. i.e. the habit of smoking. That urge to grab a smoke and light it up when you get into the car. That urge to light up after a meal or a drink. These like any habit are easily and created for that matter easily broken. After all we humans are a creature of habit. Breaking the physical habit can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a month or so. Note, if you have ever parented a child, and you ever tried to change their nighttime routine or wake up routine, or any routine for that matter it generally take 4-6 days before the new routine is habit and the old routine is a distant memory. This is the same for adults as well it is just that in this case you are also dealing with the chemical and the mental while dealing with the physical habit.
So, grab a drink straw and chew on it, get a fidget spinner, do something to pre-occupy your thoughts and physical actions and you will be a former smoker in short time.
Ohh and if you made it this far lets think in these terms...
1 pack a day habit costs roughly $2000 a year. That is a sweet vacation - Beach House for a week, Disney Trip, Cruise, I'm sure you have your own ideas.
And if financial motivation is not your thing then there is...
Smoking is bad mmmmmmK!
spoken like a true addict.
I wonder how Philip Morris feels about e-cigarettes. I would imagine tobacco cigarettes are a lot cheaper for them to make and easier to market because there's low "startup costs." I doubt they'd be funding studies like this because the whole point is to keep as many people addicted to nicotine as possible. It must be hard going from a world of the 50s where the majority of adult men smoked and 30some% of women did too, to a world where smokers are standing in a sad little corner 25 feet from building entrances.
At least in the US, smoking in general (vaping or smoking, that is) isn't usually associated with the upper income brackets unless you're talking high-end cigars and such. As the blue collar labor force is reduced, I would think the number of active smokers would go way down. But, those who are smokers are usually pretty hardcore about it. My mother smokes and when she comes to visit, you can tell how agitated she gets when she can't have her smoke breaks. I used to commute on the train to work, and there was an express train that went almost an hour without stopping that I would take pretty frequently. First stop, the smokers were lining up at the door miles before, smokes and lighters in hand, just waiting for the doors to open. That's dedication. :-)
their nicotine patch sales are down
Where does that fit? The "juice" is pretty much the same. I'd love to learn about this.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
First of all banning is not a solution.
That depends on your goals. If you primary goal is to put a lot of poor people and minorities behind bars for using drugs that seldom result in meaningful harm to others then banning is a terrific solution. Not so much for people with a sense of decency and any amount of practicality though.
"Using a new low-cost, 3-D printed testing device, UConn researchers found that e-cigarettes loaded with a nicotine-based liquid are potentially as harmful as unfiltered cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage."
so they are just as bad in this one specific way, negating all the other ways in which they aren't as bad. I also have never met anyone who has said that vaping is harmless. but then again i live with in my own bias so it may be true elsewhere.
for those saying vapers should just quit.. please understand that some people are using vapes to quit. I have personally gone from a pack a day to half a dozen puffs on a vape a day. so even if they are as bad as regular cigarettes my consumption has dropped significantly.
from the article:
"The team set their test so that 20 puffs of an e-cigarette was roughly equivalent to smoking one tobacco cigarette, a ratio supported by other research. The team gathered samples at 20, 60, and 100 puffs. The potential DNA damage from e-cigarettes increased with the number of puffs, Kadimisetty says."
has anyone studied the frequency that people vape when they switch from cigarettes to vapes? this is another data point that would be an incredibly powerful data point. because smoking a 25 pack of cigarettes would be equivalent to 500 puffs on a vape and that is a lot! In my case, by this math i have gone from a pack a day to less than half a smoke a day... in my use case i take a single puff when i have a nicotene craving, these mostly happen when every smoker has a hard time quitting; traffic, enjoying alcholic beverages, deadlines, other stresses. so even if they are equally as dangerous, the reduction of intake is incredibly significant
The thing about vaping is that first it helped clear the tar from my lungs and now it helps control cravings. No one has ever said that they were perfectly safe but they are a good way to help you quit smoking and reduce your nicotine addiction. eventually it will be time to let go of the vape (once i have changed a few more personal habits and cemented good practices in place) i will be passing it on to other family members and helping them quit smoking too.
so, anyone who is considering quitting smoking and using vaping as an aid to do so, do not be alarmed by this article, you can do it! just remember, like with anything else on the market (nicotine mists, gums, patches, pills, etc) vaping is an aid to help you quit, first you have to unequivocally decide that you want to quit.
How is any of this being taken as fact? The article states, "while testing a new electro-optical screening device they developed in their lab. The small 3-D printed device is believed to be the first of its kind capable of quickly detecting DNA damage, or genotoxicity, in environmental samples in the field, the researchers say."
This is a device currently undergoing testing, any results from it are irrelevant until the device has been proven to work as designed. Further, the thing has not, as far as I can see, gone under any peer review.
There are about 4000 chemicals in a cigarette, there are about 10 in the average flavored e-juice. About 2-3 in unflavored. There's basically no possibility of vaping being worse than smoking, or even close. Nicotine IS addictive, but the point is harm reduction, not harm elimination. Quitting simply doesn't work for a sizable portion of the population. People try and repeatedly fail. If we can get people to switch, it's a public health benefit.
There are proof electronic cigarettes are at least 97% less harmfull then smoking, so please stop it publishing crap like this.
They do the exact same thing with artificial sweeteners. There's always some horribly flawed study going around claiming how they don't actually help you lose weight, cause insulin spikes or are just bad because they're all chemical-y. Never mind the fact we already know too much real sugar is horrible for your health, and artificial sweeteners have a proven record of safety in real-world use.
Thing is, the people pushing this kind of agenda feel an approach of "harm reduction" is inadequate, and that you shouldn't have sweetened products at all. Or smoke. They probably don't like sex either. The world would be a much better place if people gave up on the idea of trying to "save" others from themselves.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
3D printing something to test vapor quality makes one kind of wonder. Ever smell a freshly 3D printed anything?
I was surprised the FDA didn't ban them outright.
At least, the FDA (and the various similar government agancies in other jurisdiction) are consistent.
Cigarettes, cigars, smoking pipes, and other tabacco products aren't banned.
e-Cigarette (basically the same as above, the only slight difference being that it relies on a complex electronic system to deliver its harmful chemical components instead of an open fire *) shouldn't be banned either.
The only *actually* surprising at first sight thing, is that Marijuana smoking is banned.
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* - As the delivery isn't done by burning but by electronic delivery (ultra-sound vaporisation, mostly, as far as I know), in theory that means it shaves off a few harmful substances compared to classical tobacco (at least there aren't toxic combustion products).
In practice, that means that e-cig fluid productors can go batshit crazy in their mixes (classical tobacco product are merely treated dried plants - i.e.: there's only so much that you can add before you start having more additivies than dried plants. e-cig fluids are mixes of whatever they can think of) and, in practice, there's way more harmful potential in e-cigs (specially if they can manage to get their toxic mixes below the tolerated maxima).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Uh, the headline is misleading.
Nicotine in e-cigarettes found just as harmful as nicotine in regular cigarettes.
UConn researchers found that e-cigarettes loaded with a nicotine-based liquid are potentially as harmful as unfiltered cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage.
Oh, and it gets even better:
UConn’s scientists decided to look into whether the chemicals in e-cigarettes could cause damage to human DNA while testing a new electro-optical screening device they developed in their lab. The small 3-D printed device is believed to be the first of its kind capable of quickly detecting DNA damage, or genotoxicity, in environmental samples in the field, the researchers say.
First test of our new device to detect DNA damage!
The device is unique in that it converts chemicals into their metabolites during testing, which replicates what happens in the human body, Kadimisetty says.
Sorry, first test of our new device to simulate biological processes and see if they produce chemicals that can cause DNA.
E-cigarettes still don't contain smoke, 676 chemical additives (flame retardants, colorants, preservatives, pesticides, etc.), carbon monoxide, or the like. As well, the chemical additives are generally propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, which are both generally safe (vegetable glycerin is absorbed as a metabolizable carbohydrate-like food, more of a ketone; propylene glycol is apparently actually less-harmful than that).
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I was always under the impression it was other chemicals in cigarettes that were even more harmful.
Yes, harm comes also from nearly everything else beside nicotine, too.
In theory : cigarettes (and other classical products) work by burning dried leaves, so they could potentially release more toxic combustion products, whereas e-cig work mostly electronically (ultra-sound vaporisation) and should create that many extra compounds.
In practice : cigarettes work by burning dried leaves and there only as much additives that you can add to the leaves before starting to have more chemicals than plants. e-cigs use a fluid that is more or less a free mix of everything they can manage to cram in it while staying under the tolerated maximma.
So e-cig have way much more potential to contain harmful shit.
(Basically the same difference that exist in industrial processed food)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The propylene-glycol and glycerine are the same as what are used in smoke machines for theatres and discos.
Technically, that is a kind of smoke. It is definitely not a mist of "harmless water vapour" that some people think.
Eating and inhaling are two different things. While the chemical responsible for "popcorn lung" is perfectly safe for eating, it is not safe for inhaling.
It does concern me that vapers often somehow have got the misconception that it would be OK to vape just about everywhere where smoking is banned.
No, your exhalation is not safe water vapour. And the exhalation also contains nicotine - just as much nicotine as the exhalation from a smoker.
The big difference for the second-hand smoker is that the thing is not lit all the time - all you get is smoke (!) that has passed through the vaper's lungs first.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I highly doubt that E-cigarettes by themselves cause DNA damage/cell manipulation. It's the ingredients of whatever "E-liquid" that is inhaled that is the focus here.
So that leads me to believe that people should be focusing on the quality or ingredients of the E-liquid they are inhaling. Why blanket an entire medium as harmful when it's the consumable that is causing the harm?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
In theory :
- regular cigarettes (and other classical tobacco product) work by *burning* dried leaves.
- e-cig work by electronically delivering the fluid (mostly ultra-sound vaporisation).
Thus cigarettes have much more potential to release combustion toxic products.
In short : e-cig are not burning, in theory they are better.
In practice :
- there's only that much additives that you can add to tobacco before you start having more tobacco than actual dried plants.
- e-cig fluid is more or less a free mix of whatever the manufacturer can manage to cram while staying within tolerated maxima.
Thus e-cig have way much more potential to contain toxic shit.
In short : e-cig use an artificial fluid. Be afraid. Very afraid.
(The same rule applies to any industrially processed food product).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I eat chicken, but whenever I try to inhale it I start coughing violently. I'm sure there's nothing bad in it, right? Water, too. Drink the stuff all the time. Can't understand why I shouldn't just breathe it. Mind you, it could be worse. At least they're not trying to mainline bread sauce. Yet.
{smoke} which is a byproduct of combustion. They produce a vapor fog that LOOKS like smoke, but isn't.
Yup, in theory, at least e-cig don't burn things so they don't toxic products of combustion, they instead deliver their durg by ultra-sound vaporisation.
So e-cig should have been the less harmful one when considering the burning fire.
In practice, there's only that many additives that you can add to dried tobacco leaves before you start to have more chemical than actual dried plants.
Whereas, e-cig fluid is basically any mix the manufacturer can manage to cram together while staying under the tolerated maximma.
So e-cig are actually the ones with the most potential to deliver toxic shit to the consumer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'd like to see the full testing scenario before judgement. Unfortunately most of these studies are performed by individuals that are not product users. Ecigs have an operating range, where once you exceed the operating temperature or wicking parameters produces unpleasant results. This study and the fancy 3d printed sensor might have just be showing the DNA harming effects of vaping a dry coil.
Forty-Two Chemicals Identified in Electronic Cigarettes
= exposure can be especially harmful to the health.
Chemicals in red are emitted in secondhand smoke.
2-butanone (MEK) 2-furaldehyde
Acetaldehyde Acetic acid Acetone Acrolein Aluminum Barium Benzene Boron Butanal Butyl hydroxyl toluene Cadmium Chromium Copper CrotonaldehydeDiethylene Glycol Formaldehyde Glyoxal Iron Isoprene Lead Limonene m,p-Xyelen Magnesium Manganese Nickel Nicotine N-Nitrosonornicotine o-Methylbenzaldehyde p,m-Xylene Phenol
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Potassium
Propanal Propylene Glycol Sulfur Tin Toluene ValeraldehydeZinc Zirconium
http://www.gaspforair.org/gasp...
The following compounds that are on the Proposition 65 list have already been identified in mainstream or secondhand (sidestream) e-cigarette vapor:
Acetaldehyde (MS)
Cadmium (MS)
Formaldehyde (MS,SS)
Isoprene (SS)
Lead (MS)
Nickel (MS)
Nicotine (MS, SS)
N-Nitrosonornicotine (MS, SS)
Toluene (MS, SS)
As the two papers linked above note, there are other toxic chemicals in the vapor as well as ultrafine particles, that likely have cardiovascular effects. E-cigarettes do not deliver "pure nicotine" and "harmless water vapor."
http://www.tobacco.ucsf.edu/9-...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Food-grade vegetable glycerine and peppermint oil just don't scream, "I am chemical death" to me, but what do I know.
If you source your fluid from a local organic pop-and-mom shop that makes a product that is basically just pure glycerin, and peppermint oil and nothing else :
sure, you're going to get something which has the potential to be a lot less toxic than burning dried leaves treated with tons of additives.
But as soon as you speak about cheap industrial products, you know that the manufacturer will try to get away with any thing they can within tolerated / detectable concentrations.
(The same as with industrial food : if it's processed to the point that you cannot recognize actual fruits/vegetables/chunks of meat - be afraid, very afraid).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's what all the smokers looking to use e-cigs as a rebranding opportunity (to themselves and others) desperately want to believe. They think there's David-and-Goliath battle between the plucky e-cig industry and the nasty old tobacco industry that wants to shut them down because their "safer option" is a threat. In reality there are no good guys to root for in any fight between the vendors of death sticks and the vendors of death juice.
Now cigs and e-cigs are probably not exactly as deadly as each other (which is worse, I'm not sure) and they likely kill their users in different ways, but I don't think that's worth splitting hairs over.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's always the chemicals. Chemicals are bad. Chemicals cause cancer. Just call the chemicals by their common name and then they become natural. Are natural chemicals bad?
Do yours.
Do you suggest that every vaper should acquire expensive chromatography / tandem mass-spectrometers, just to be able to check that the fluid their inhalating doesn't contain any extra additive? that the manufacturer didn't try to smuggle a few extra substances just below the tolerated/detectable concentration? that the manufacturing processus didn't leak any accidental substances in it?
e-cig fluid is an industrial product. There's a gigantic potential for abuse.
(see the problems with industrial food products to get a good idea).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It is tantamount to slow suicide.
It fucks up your lungs.
It fucks up your heart.
It shows you are a weak person who cannot resist an addictive habit. And that is not a positive character trait. In my company we don't hire smokers, period. We may not tell them that's why they were hired, but make no mistake, it IS often the precise reason they are not hired.
Last but hardly least, the cancers caused by smoking are a really shitty way to die. And if you get such cancers, make no mistake, you're going to die from them. I watched my father die from lung cancer and in the end stage he had pain which even injections of morphine would not mitigate. Trust me, it is an awful thing to see someone you love die like this. We all have to die, but HOW we die is not trivial.
Life is precious. It's not a video game. There are no replays or extra lives. Smoking is something a person who has no regard for his or her own health does. If that doesn't bring it into sharp focus for you, then you're a waste of oxygen and maybe smoking and dying as soon as possible is what you SHOULD do. Or better yet, hang yourself and get it over with, because the world has an oversupply of idiots like you.
E-Cig Vapor contains: Nicotine (optional) Propylene glycol (not Ethylene glycol - which is toxic). Used in asthma inhalers and nebulizers. An experiment using animals determined "air containing these vapors in amounts up to the saturation point is completely harmless". The USA FDA has classified propylene glycol as "generally recognised as safe". Vegetable glycerol - low toxicity. Used in medications, cosmetic and food items. Tobacco smoke contains: Acetaldehyde: suspected carcinogen. Acetone: irritant: can cause kidney and liver damage. Acrolein: extremely toxic. Acrylonitrile: suspected human carcinogen. 1-aminonaphthalene: causes cancer. 2-aminonaphthalene: causes bladder cancer. Ammonia: raises blood pressure. Benzene: carcinogen. Benzo[a]pyrene: mutagenic and highly carcinogenic 1,3-Butadiene: suspected carcinogen. Butyraldehyde: damages the lining of nose and lungs. Cadmium: a heavy metal and highly toxic Carbon Monoxide: decreases heart and muscle function. Catechol: causes respiratory tract irritation and dermatitis. Chromium: heavy metal and carcinogen. Cresol: causes upper respiratory, nasal and throat irritation. Crotonaldehyde: thought to interfere with immune function. Formaldehyde: carcinogen Hydrogen Cyanide: lethal poison Hydroquinone: affects central nervous system effects. Isoprene: irritates skin,eyes and mucous membranes. Lead: causes brain damage Methyl Ethyl Ketone: depresses the central nervous system. Nickel: causes bronchial asthma and is a known carcinogen. Nicotine: increases in heart rate and blood pressure, addictive element Nitric Oxide: linked to Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and asthma. NNN, NNK, and NAT: known or possible carcinogens Phenol: damages the the liver, kidneys; respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous system. Polonium - radioactive* Propionaldehyde: skin, eye and respiratory system irritant Pyridine: causes eye and upper respiratory tract irritation Quinoline: causes genetic damage and is a possible carcinogen Resorcinol: skin and eye irritant Styrene: carcinogen Toluene: linked to permanent brain damage.
Full disclosure: I vape. I'm also a scientist so I am familiar with peer-reviewed papers; however, this is not my area of research.
After giving the paper a brief read through there are a few glaringly obvious issues with how we went from scientific paper to media headline as well as issues with the paper itself.
1. The real purpose/point of this paper has to do with the little test rig they developed, not the findings related to electronic cigarettes. (hence it being in a journal like ACS Sensors and not something more health related) The ecig stuff is more like an example use they give rather than the focus of the paper.
2. Again I will emphasize that this is not my area of study, however, the enzymes the samples were exposed to came from liver, which seems to me the ideal thing to use if you're testing something that is going to be consumed not necessarily inhaled. I don't believe lung cancer is caused by the stuff in smoke first getting broken down and processed by the liver before causing DNA damage in the lungs.
3. There is no information about what types of cigarettes or e-cigarettes were tested. The nicotine liquid used in them varies greatly and the lack of this information makes this study unrepeatable. That said its really not supposed to be; the point was their test rig, not the e-cigarette stuff.
4. This is in vitro not in vivo. (google it)
If the authors wanted their findings about e-cigarettes to hold any weight they would've needed to do way more testing and provide way more information; they didn't because thats not the kind of paper this is and the results should not be treated as such. Unfortunately the mainstream media doesn't understand science or scientific literature and has a tendency to grab something minor and turn it into a huge headline.
Is vaping harmless? Hell no. Is it as bad as smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes? Probably not as bad. Worse? I seriously doubt it.
Acetaldehyde is the flavoring in banana, strawberry, and peach. Like, the actual chemical in fruit. It's a beer fault. The chemical is a ketone and is absorbed through the lungs and processed as energy; your body will produce it when low on glycogen, and your brain runs more efficiently on that than on glucose.
Acetic acid is vinegar. It's safe in low concentrations, dangerous in high concentrations. Inhale the fumes off 20% dilute acetic acid and your lungs will melt.
Cadmium, nickel, lead, and copper are heavy metals. Typically not present in e-cigarette fluids. Low-grade fluids may have some impurities.
Benzine, butyl-anything, and aromatic hydrocarbons are roughly the same thing. Aromatic anything needs a ring hydrocarbon structure, and generally aromatic compounds contain a benzine ring. These are volatile and evaporate out of solution rapidly.
The market of e-cigarette fluid is pretty unregulated, and there's some nasty low-end crap. Decent stuff is generally an aromatic flavorant (fragrance oil), propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, and nicotine. "Decent" encompasses anything that's not the lowest of low in this particular business; it wasn't always that way.
So it's between most of that stuff not being in most cigarette fluid and most of that stuff not being toxic.
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Vaping gets its name from that fact that it vaporizes a liquid into a gas. In the same way that my mom's tea kettle vaporizes water into steam. There is no smoke. Nothing is burnt.
Disclosure: I don't vape e-cigarettes or smoke cigarettes.
They think there's David-and-Goliath battle between the plucky e-cig industry and the nasty old tobacco industry that wants to shut them down because their "safer option" is a threat.
That battle is between e-cigarette makers and state taxing authorities. States make so much money from tobacco taxes that they'll have budget shortfalls if people stop buying tobacco.
Tobacco makes their money either way, they grow the tobacco that's used to extract the nicotine for e-liquid.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Nope, that's what studies that aren't done in the U.S. are saying, and have been for the last year or more. Current consensus is ~95% harm reduction compared to traditional cigarettes, confirmed in studies from several different countries. Correlation does not cause causation blah, blah, blah; but it is quite interesting that the only studies saying these are super horrible bad come from the U.S., where there is the huge tobacco lobby....
You will note that the studies did NOT say they were completely harmless, as anything inhaled can cause harm, just that there is a dramatic reduction in the harm that is done. This reduction sometimes even lowers harm to levels to at or below risks from NO3 compounds from fossil fuel burning in large cities.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Vaper here. For about 3 months now.
I make my own vaping fluid. It's composed of "pure" VG (VEGETABLE GLYCERIN) and "PG" (PROPYLENE GLYCOL), with added Nicotine and some flavours. PG, VG and nicotine come from reliable, trusted sources, and have no additives whatsoever. Aroma is more complex, but you can live without it if you do not trust its components, although most are at least accepted as food addictives, so should be safe.
To be honest, the way they put it really looks like they are funded by the Big Guys.
All I can say is for the last two months or so I feel much more healthy, no more morning coughs, I already reduced my nicotine intake for more than 50%. I tend to vape a lot, though, but as long as my sources do not lie about the base components (VG and PG) I should be way safer.
There are no such things as "addictives", unless they mean aroma. And again, those, if coming from a reliable, trusted source, should be safe.
Alvie
Citation needed.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I've never been a tobacco user, and don't "vape" either....
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They may help us survive the global climate change apocalypse that is near.
If you don't follow this you probably wouldn't know this but allot of eliquid vendors are no longer using nicotine from tobacco.
I love these things. If you have to work around ex-cigarette smokers who switched to vaping you'll be praising e-cigs from on high. No more smoke in the air, people smelling like buttcans, no litter, bad breath, people constantly congregating by the front door, etc, etc, etc, etc.
...lead shot from a blunderbuss was discovered to be just as deadly as lead shot from a AK-47.
Surely this is preferable, as smokers and vapers will just alter their DNA to the point they are no longer human and then we can really discriminate against them, like denying them health care.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
Do your own research. You should not need to be spoon fed to do your own research, especially since you are in essence claiming to be educated about the topic.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
PG, VG, Nicotine and food flavoring. I mixed it so I know what's in it.
Only thing suspect is the flavoring, of which you can get a list of ingredients and shop accordingly.
Ultra-sound vaporization? Just what are you smoking? Its a wire heating element and cotton.
That is certainly news to me.
What is the source? As I understand it, lab synthesized nicotine is still much more expensive than tobacco sourced nicotine.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
In a forum like this, I think citations are as much or more for the other, non-educated readers like myself than they are for the person you are responding to.
I take (minor, technical) exception to this being regarded as smoke. Ideally, no chemical reaction occurs. Droplets of liquid vapors are the result of boiling the material, and it should not be producing combustion products (carbon oxides, acrolein, etc.). Of course, it's possible that the thing might overheat and burn the material, but that's usually readily detectable by the user. Please don't consider this a plug or slant regarding the focus of the topic, just a matter of defining the word 'smoke'. I also can't stand when people describe it as harmless water vapor (it contains almost not water, usually just what the hygroscopic nature of the glycols allows); it degrades indoor air quality considerably. I used to work at a place where at least 10% of all people there (about 100 folks on a floor, and in some areas, more than half used them, including myself at the time) used them, and while less choking than a 'smoke-filled room', I definitely had a lot more respiratory issues there than any other office space i've worked in.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I'd imagine the metals are coming from the cheap RDA's or mods, or whatever they're called. The wire, if it's cheap could have who-knows-what in it, and when it gets hot enough, just like the screws it's held in with....
I had a sucky sig.
Two major carcinogen groups ( tobacco specific nitrosamines and tar) should be absent in e-cigarettes. It is puzzling that they would be as harmful as regular cigarettes.
The employment to population ratio in the US is a bit over 59%. That means 41% of all Americans able to work, aren't.
This number was near 65% back in the 1990s. Ironically, back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, the number was lower - scraping 55% at that time. However, it was much less common for married women to work back then. The two income household was, socially at least, a 1980s innovation.
So here we are in an era where automated manufacturing and AI-controlled machines will delete millions of jobs. That number is never going to be 65% again. It will be well below 50% in 20 years, and I might be pessimistic.
My first thought on this matter was that humankind has always been quite evil to its surplus population. You need but look back to the last few times there was a significant population surplus where no immediate use for the labor force could be identified. Mao's China, the Ukraine in the 1920s/30s, the Crusades, think hard and you'll come up with some examples. Go back to antiquity and you'll find some really horrid ones.
I submit that we'd find a way to kill off the surplus somehow - gladiatorial combat, mass extermination, whatever. So letting them die by doing stupid shit is actually merciful compared to what is coming for the surplus population.
To think that the people who created/are creating all this computerized automation didn't even think about this. It'll not be believed in the future. But I believe it - so interested in proving that it could be done that they never thought whether it SHOULD be done.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Replacement cigarettes that those mist breathers are bringing inside are awful too?
Go figure. I'm SHOCKED.
I DIDN'T SEE THIS ONE COMING AT ALL.
I'm totally surprised.
I was thinking 3-D printing causes cancer.
Don't those things produce off-gassing from the plastics?
They say stuff from your water bottle leaches into your water. Won't stuff from a 'freshly printed' piece of plastic do much the same at a minimum?
Not sure I would want to breathe thru a printed plastic piece which is what they simulated.
"Alright so what I've gathered from this, is they used an iron lung to hit an unknown ecig with an unknown juice, at an unknown wattage. This immediately opens up the possibility of significant dry hits occuring, combustion, and a variety of other easily avoided factors that the human tongue and lungs would avoid long before the compounds of higher toxicity would be formed. They then extracted this who the fuck knows what glorified gas release from the ecig into DMSO, a mostly non-reactant solvent (read: this chemical treatment likely did not influence the results. I'd have to do the chemistry out but I'll assume they did this properly).
They then treated this nebulous ecig extract with silver chloride, an extremely reactive compound, for imaging purposes. It could be argued that this influenced the results, given that tossing some amount of silver chloride into a DNA mixture will cause damage and reactivity (DNA has a negative charge silver a positive one in this ionic compound). Which brings me to the fundamental flaw of the experiment, though a hard one to avoid: they used a DNA and enzyme mixture. This is not representative of the cell, the tissues, the organs, and certainly not the impact and mitigation that will be found in the entire organism of interest. Basically they tossed an amalgam of chemicals, derived from an unknown source, extracted (inhaled) under unknown and possibly varying conditions of heat, moisture, and possible combustion, treated it with an extremely reactive metallic ion, then tossed it into a mixture of raw DNA and enzymes, then claimed electronic cigarettes are more or equally harmful as tobacco smoke.
All this study demonstrates is terrible methodology, or at the very least abysmal description and transparency of metholodogy, an esoteric investigation into how an unknown mixture of compounds treated with silver chloride effect DNA and associated enzymes in an environment external to the cellular nucleus, the cell itself and most importantly, external to the organism. They needed to do chemochromatographic studies on the extract to see what exactly was being pulled out. If combusted compounds were in the extract, that is not representative of the majority of ecig use. They needed to be transparent about what device was used, what juice, what brand, what coil, what coil metal, what wattage, what resistance, what temperature, how long the "hits" were... there's extremely important variables not addressed, yet they make a sweeping claim. It's so obviously for attention after reading the study.
TL;DR: this study is peddling their new device, used some bullshit title to gain attention, and made dramatic and dangerous overstatements about their "results.""
"are potentially" and the following white space is filled with value ... potentially
.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Not sure if Pizer is involved with their funding.
A better non-pharma study the other day couldnt find any e-cig in biological cells. That was comparing ecigs to real ciggerettes though.
So if big pharma is making the case that any niccotine causes DNA damage, then why do they sell their "Quit" products?
If you look at this like a business man, they're trying to find any reason to make the competitors product look worse to theirs.
Capitalism is showing noone wants those 'quit' products, but is their definition of why their own product is 'safe', really safe?
Non-parma scientists say ecigs are 14 times less dangerous than ciggarettes.
So is this more fake news to sell more 'Quit' products? Becuase right now, people are still dying from the 1000+ know cancer causing chemicals aready present inside cigarrettes!
You are inhaling SMOKE. "Flavored" smoke...duh
how do we deal with people selling a device that exists primarily to deliver a highly addictive drug? I'm old enough to see this for what it is, but I worry about my kids. I for one don't want my kids stuck with various chemical dependencies. This also raises a lot of unpleasant thoughts. Like should it be legal to engineer a harmless but highly addictive drug? I know, if it's highly addictive it's not harmless, right? But where do we draw the line?
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Stress makes it harder to cope with any addiction, and the older you get the more stressed you are, because responsibilities come with age.
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I kept coming back to cigarettes because of the lack of risk.
So now I can get my smell back AND die quickly.
Awesome !
Here's the better question you ask yourself as a non-smoker: why do I want to put anything into my lungs to begin with?
Here's the answer: To prevent asphyxiation.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
That's what all the smokers looking to use e-cigs as a rebranding opportunity
There are no words adequate to describe your pig-headed, self-obsessed idiocy.
Big tobacco has moved on from the US. https://youtu.be/6UsHHOCH4q8
But seriously, who is really surprised that choosing to inhale nicotine laced smoke or vapor is potentially dangerous? Lungs are amazing but also pretty damn fragile.
Note: I'm asthmatic.
The tobacco companies added all kinds of shit to make their products more 'appealing' or tolerable. You can't tell me that the same isn't happening w/ ecig consumables.
Also can we all agree that there is no good name for the liquids? E-juice, e-liquid, vaping liquid. They all sound stupid or just gross. The use of i and e as a prefix for any sort of electronic device is irritating as it is. But e-juice? Gross.
Most smoker smoke round the hour. Since in msot work/public/station building they are banned (at least here in germany) they smoke outside. How do you propose that they smoke without being caught ? Alcohol smuggling worked because people went to a speakeasy and similar after work to drink. Cigarette smuggling would not work is it would force people to ONLY smoke outside work hour and only in hidden palce (at home for example). Many people would adapt and chain smoke at home, but the majority ? They would almost certainly try to stop , give up.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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This is Slowpoke interrupting this broadcast with this breaking news bulletin, nicotine is harmful! We go live to the scene with one of the first recorded victims of the harms of nicotine!
[video feed of a grave]
Thank you for that interview. Next up, assassination in Rome, who is behind the murder of Julius Caesar?
Good point. I would have assumed the wire is a conductor and would have an isolating coating (e.g. encased in borosilicate glass), but I guess I don't know how those things are constructed.
You could use bare wire, though: there's nothing to short to. You'd just have to replace the wire now and then; it'd be an extreme wear part.
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and nobody wants to pay for it. That takes taxes and people don't want to pay. Also there's the issue of how we use our drug policy to enforce racial segregation. It's no accident (or even secret) that enforcement is overwhelmingly on Blacks and Latinos. That's not me being a SJW, that's just cold hard facts.
IIRC Norway solved the problem by legalizing everything, having the drug administered by professionals in a clinical setting and then when the high was done immediately getting to work on helping the addict quit. It works, but you'd have to be willing to get people to pay for all that.
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Wasn't it a month ago that they were saying the e-cigarettes were less harmful than regular cigarettes?
The source did not say what you just pretended it did.
Inhaled nicotine is very well know to damage lung tissue so your distraction about skin patches has nothing at all to do with that.