Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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."
For some it is easy, for others it's harder than quitting an addiction like alcohol or opioids. (Source: I've worked in homeless shelters and talked to addicts about it).
For me, it was easy the first time to go cold turkey. I was 17 and I'd been smoking for three years. When I started smoking again 18 years later and then quit three years after that, it was really difficult. The nicotine had really taken hold for some reason the second time. I finally turned to Nicorette gum, and in that moment when I popped that little cube in my mouth and the craving just dissipated, I realized I'd been a drug addict.
Been smoke free for nearly 20 years, and it's definitely the best decision from a health standpoint I've ever made.
A lot of people still think smoking is cool, but somehow an e-cig is like sucking on a dildo.
Nobody still thinks smoking is cool. I never thought I'd see the day when smoking marijuana carries less of a social stigma than smoking tobacco.
Disclaimer: I smoke.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.