Polyethylene Glycol 400

[ratedPG]

Thanks, TBob. That Time magazine article you linked to, got me started in my PG research. I've found some more articles about PG vapor, listed in the toxicology report sticky thread, if anyone's interested.

[deewal]

There's another thread about PEG here - PEG a new ingredient, instead of PG and VG

There's one before that as well Kate.
Sedansa say their medical team had some doubts about PG so they are using PEG 400 because it's safer.

I don't know what has happened to http://ecigforum.com/index.php but it was a very entertaining thread.

[ratedPG]

Can we find information about this study ?

Surely, Alain, here you go. This isn't the 'three year study,' but it's very similar. I got this from the Journal of Pharmacology And Experimental Therapeutics website. It's copyright is 1947, so I'm going out on a limb and assuming it's in the public domain now. (If not, I'm referencing the whole article with appropriate authorship. I'm highlighting certain bits with color changes.)

Journal of Pharmacology And Experimental Therapeutics, Vol. 91, Issue 1, 52-76, 1947
Copyright © 1947 by American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

TESTS FOR THE CHRONIC TOXICITY OF PROPYLEXE GLYCOL AND TRIETHYLENE GLYCOL ON MONKEYS AND RATS BY VAPOR INHALATION AND ORAL ADMINISTRATION

O. H. ROBERTSON 1, CLAYTON G. LOOSLI 1, THEODORE T. PUCK 1, HENRY WISE 1, HENRY M. LEMON 1, and WILLIAM LESTER JR. 1
1 From the Department of Medicine, the Douglas Smith Foundation for Medical Research and the Bartlett Memorial Fund of the University of Chicago and the Commission on Air-Borne Infections, U. S. Army Epidemiological Board


With a view to determining the safety of employing the vapors of propylene glycol and triethylene glycol in atmospheres inhabited by human beings, monkeys and rats were exposed continuously to high concentrations of these vapors for periods of 12 to 18 months. Equal numbers of control animals were maintained under physically similar conditions. Long term tests of the effects on ingesting triethylene glycol were also carried out. The doses administered represented 50 to 700 times the amount of glycol the animal could absorb by breathing air saturated with the glycol.

Comparative observations on the growth rates, blood counts, urine examinations, kidney function tests, fertility and general condition of the test and control groups, exhibited no essential differences between them with the exception that the rats in the glycol atmospheres exhibited consistently higher weight gains. Some drying of the skin of the monkeys' faces occurred after several months continuous exposure to a heavy fog of triethylene glycol. However, when the vapor concentration was maintained just below saturation by means of the glycostat this effect did not occur.

Examination at autopsy likewise failed to reveal any differences between the animals kept in glycolized air and those living in the ordinary room atmosphere. Extensive histological study of the lungs was made to ascertain whether the glycol had produced any generalized or local irritation. None was found. The kidneys, liver, spleen and bone marrow also were normal.

The results of these experiments in conjunction with the absence of any observed ill effects in patients exposed to both triethylene glycol and propylene glycol vapors for months at a time, provide assurance that air containing these vapors in amounts up to the saturation point is completely harmless.

Submitted on June 4, 1947

(Since triethylene glycol is a polyethylene glycol, I would take this as an example of testing of PEG vapor as harmless as well. Bonus!)

[deewal]

A personal, portable, propylene glycol vapor delivery device?!...why isn't this lauded as the greatest advance in disease prevention in 70 years??

Because there is no money to be made Preventing Diseases but there are Millions to be made in Treatment of Diseases.

[gep]

PRECISELY, deewal!

Which is why preventative medicine isn't covered in great detail in American Medical Schools. They focus more on being reactive rather than proactive.

(but that's a whole other topic)

[ratedPG]

Well, gosh, that's just depressing.

[rabbittrail]

I'm gonna hold out a little optimism. After all, the antibiotic soap and hand gel markets are going like gangbusters. Germophobic soccer moms go thru hand gel by the gallon, all in the pursuit of not catching a bug from a shopping cart handle, or some such.

I'd be willing to bet that if Johnson&Johnson or Unilever got some marketing geniusry onto this, and marketed e-cigs to the 'hand gel crowd' as the "next step in infection protection," we'd have the entire country vaping within five years.

"You've disinfected your household surfaces. You've disinfected your hands. Now, disinfect the very air you breathe with Purell's PureAir VaporStick. Stop the germs...before they stop you!" I can see the commercials now.

Just a little marketing twist to get the "cig" connotation out, and focus on the main ingredient instead of the additive.

Before long, American inginuity will have e-cigs cheaper, sturdier, longer-lasting, accept universal carts, and absolutely idiot-proof.

And why stop at nicotine? Any medicine or additive that can be nebulized could conceivably be sold as cartridges. Get the FDA regulatin' the carts and not the e-cigs. I see a world where carts can come in caffeine, taurine, guarine, all those hip college additives. Vape your vitamin supplements. Headache? Aspirin in a cart. PMS irritability? Cart.

[/rabbittrail]

[Kate]

I'd love to read more of those kind of upbeat views. It does all seem like doom and gloom around here sometimes ... why can't we imagine positive scenarios - we just think like victims so much that nothing good seems possible.

[ZambucaLu]

And why stop at nicotine? Any medicine or additive that can be nebulized could conceivably be sold as cartridges. Get the FDA regulatin' the carts and not the e-cigs. I see a world where carts can come in caffeine, taurine, guarine, all those hip college additives. Vape your vitamin supplements. Headache? Aspirin in a cart. PMS irritability? Cart.

[/rabbittrail]

You have to remember that these things are being inhaled, not ingested. Not everything ingested is good for the lungs.

Lu

[Kate]

Research and development - twenty years from now the optimum dose of asprin for inhaling will have been calculated and will be available in handy single dose cartridges.

[ratedPG]

Vaping medication, instead of ingesting orally, would be better in many ways. Absorption into the bloodstream would be nearly instantaneous, and complications with digestion (for example, those with stomach ulcers) would be averted.

R&D to be sure; this is not only uncharted waters, but outright Fantasyland. But it's a bright shiny future nonetheless.

We don't have jetpacks, or floating cities or flying cars or Moon colonies. But by golly, I want my 21st-century e-cigs.

Imagine a future...not too many years from now (I'd say less than 20, Kate...but probably more than 10) where vaping is so universal, the use of actual cigarettes to get nicotine--burning rolled up leaves??--is seen as not only unnecessary, but ridiculous. Akin to a guy who consults an open-pool mercury barometer in his living room to tell the weather.