Why Johnsons Creek clogs atomizers

[Schroedinger's cat]

I think that both VG and PG juices could be affected if the PG ones had traces of VG, as Bertrand hypothesizes, and if the VG based ones ended up in atomizers that had traces of PG in them.

I thought that some people still had problems with the JC, or is it because they received an older batch? My problem with JC (PG) is that it is too thin, and just evaporates somewhere, without me being able to get almost anything out of it....

I agree with Kate that this thread should get a different name and be posted in the health section. And its title should include some sort of invocation for a chemist....

[TropicalBob]

It is alarming, Bertrand! Please keep working on this until you determine under what conditions you are getting "goo". A goo buildup inside an e-smoker's lungs would be an unfair price to pay for quitting a practice that causes a tar buildup in a smoker's lungs!

I was feeling good about PG after the Health New Zealand report and the "germ-killing vapor" thread. You'll raised a new concern that needs resolution.

[Bertrand]

It is alarming, Bertrand! Please keep working on this until you determine under what conditions you are getting "goo". A goo buildup inside an e-smoker's lungs would be an unfair price to pay for quitting a practice that causes a tar buildup in a smoker's lungs!

I was feeling good about PG after the Health New Zealand report and the "germ-killing vapor" thread. You'll raised a new concern that needs resolution.

Yeah.. heheh. I'll need to buy some more if I don't get totally put off esmoking - I've only got JC left, and it doesn't appear to be contaminated. It's not really the goo that's the problem - it's the strong likelihood that there's PO in at least some batches of our PG liquids. I don't like the idea of something you can use to cut DNA with in my lungs any more than you do.

NZ test did not actually test the toxicity of the liquid directly - it used a literature search to evaluate the toxicity of the ingredients, and PG itself isn't particularly bad.

[Kate]

There is a picture of gloopy stuff in some of the second lot of Johnson Creek here - Johnson Creek Smoke Juice: New & Improved - Comment, anyone?

No reports have been posted on problems with the third/latest batch so far.

[TropicalBob]

hehe Kate keeps trying to pull this back to JC instead of how we might be plasticizing our lungs from the inside! I envision this blue plastic wrap forming ...

I know, I know. Read the thread title. But this has become FAR MORE FASCINATING.

Bertrand, any idea what the contaminant might be? I have lots of old .......... liquid, new Janty liquid, VG, lots of flavors with PG in them. Could there ever be a way for a user to test for contamination? Without owning a college science lab?

P.S. It does need a new title and a location in Health.

[Kate]

Sorry TBob, I was responding to Schroedinger's Cat wondering if there were still problems with JC -

"I thought that some people still had problems with the JC, or is it because they received an older batch?"

I agree, this thread is more interesting as a health topic rather than as a review of JC.

[TropicalBob]

I'm just joshing you a bit. It does need to be located in Health, even though some newbies never seem to read that most important section!

I've read what I could about propylene glycol and never, ever, never read anything this alarming. I'm really curious what is causing the goo buildup, and whether that could happen inside us as well as in a bottle.

[Bertrand]

hehe Kate keeps trying to pull this back to JC instead of how we might be plasticizing our lungs from the inside! I envision this blue plastic wrap forming ...

I know, I know. Read the thread title. But this has become FAR MORE FASCINATING.

Bertrand, any idea what the contaminant might be? I have lots of old .......... liquid, new Janty liquid, VG, lots of flavors with PG in them. Could there ever be a way for a user to test for contamination? Without owning a college science lab?

P.S. It does need a new title and a location in Health.

Yeah. My hypothesis is that the contaminant is propylene oxide. It's not really anyone's fault. The manufacturer of the PG does not really expect this to get used in the way it is; the manufacturer of the e-liquid expects something labeled "PG" to be "PG", etc. According to that book, PG has often been contaminated with PO well before its use in e-cigarettes.

You can test for it using a structural analysis (I pointed out below why a component analysis is useless, since PG plus enough water and PO plus enough water would look the same in a component analysis. You can do both with some gas chromatographs. (You use different wavelengths for the component and structural analysis.) But note how in eg. the totally wicked test, the lab said "appears to be PG" or similar. I can see how this stuff would easily pass through cursory analysis.

A more practical way, if I am right, would be to find a reliable way to induce long chain polymerization like what I think we see in the goop at the bottom of those bottles. (When you squeeze the liquid out of the goop it turns into a white nylon type thing.) Ideally, you could just keep a jar of glycerine, mix it up with the new eliquid, do "whatever the missing step is", and if you get a polymer, you chuck out the eliquid. But, as I said, I only got the reaction to occur accidentally once, and three times trying to replicate it reliably. And now I'm out of that e-liquid. (I don't want to say what brand it is, except to say it's not Johnsons Creek, until I am a little more sure of this.)

The other option would just be to buy only the NPG Johnson's Creek.

For the moment, I'm back on B&H.

[Kate]

Is this something you could ask Dr Laugesen about TBob? I'm sure he would be grateful to have it brought to his attention for further study if it hasn't already been discounted as a risk. It sounds to me that the cocktail of ingredients is the problem here rather than individual chemicals?

[Bertrand]

Just one chemical, Kate: propylene oxide: Propylene oxide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It contaminates PG production when it is incompletely reacted into PG.