Registered nurse (& Biological Sciences Major) reporting in! I love these material safety hunts, I had fun with Rayon, and now Titanium wire.
The bottom line in my opinion: there's basically nothing to worry about. (
As long as the wire is pure Titanium and/or mixed with something harmless)
***Here's a few of the sources I used to research the stuff, ScienceLab is great for their up-to-date MSDS's, and in color for once
.
http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9925268
Poor lab mice experiment (this and one on guineau pigs (literally), are the only empirical studies on TiO2 inhalation, and is what the MSDS is partly based off of.
Inhalation Exposure Study of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles with a Primary Particle Size of 2 to 5 nm
Wikipedia (I know, not exactly scientific, but it's accurate 99.999% of the time
. I used it to find out how it's produced.)
Titanium dioxide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To start, Titanium is one of the toughest corrosion (rust) resistant metals on the planet, it's literally insoluble in water (will never rust underwater), and technically is impossible to rust under
normal conditions. To actually get the Titanium to rust (to make Titanium
Di-oxide, it's not oxide like most metals, it needs to be bonded with two oxygens, which is one of the reasons it's so corrosion resistant), it basically needs to be mixed with a VERY powerful acid, for example stuff they use to melt cement/metal with, or it can be mixed with a promotor as dust, and heated to
1500-2000 Kelvin! That's something vapers in 2050 can't even hope to achieve, because that means you have to dry burn your coil to 3,140 Farenheit (which is very close to it's melting point of 3,349 Farenheit, so if you dry burn it that hot, your more likely to have a white hot puddle of titanium, and a burnt insulator long before then.). So I'm not saying it's impossible to make titanium di-oxide with a vaping battery, because it fairly low resistance, BUT,
I think you'd have to be pretty darn thick to dry burn it that hot lol. By then all of your juice would be atomized, and like I said, you atty would be very hot and most likely burning some delrin nearby. It'd be way unnecessary, and I think the person who burns it that hard pointlessly, has more to worry about in life other than dry burning his coils.
If you were aforementioned level of thick-headedness, below are the possible harmful effects of Titanium rust (TiO2, Titanium Di-Oxide).
In skin, eyes, and ingestion, there's virtually no harm whatsoever. It's basically a mild irritant if you were unlucky enough to be powdered in it, and you began to mechanically rub it against your skin (much like beach sand would, but a little finer/sharper). It's like a harmless abrasive, as long as you rinse it off without rubbing it into and smearing on your skin/eyes, you'll be perfectly fine. If you swallow it, no harmful affects other than an upset stomach, and gastro-intestinal discomfort (much like eating fine sand lol, I wouldn't know), it will not bio-absorb, or get in the bloodstream, it'll simply leave the hard way, which probably won't be fun. Nausea is likely, but only if your really exposed to the stuff, like intaking a really small handful in a day, which will never happen in vaping.
Now for what we want to know about
inhalation, assuming it makes it's way out of your juice, or you happen to be inhaling over the dry-burn I guess.
No hazard is expected in normal industrial use. (THIS, is personally all I needed to know to feel safe about Titanium rust, because as vapers, we won't even come
CLOSE to normal idustrial use. We'll be exposed to such minor amounts, if any whatsoever, it'll be negligible even compared to the non-dangerous effects of workers who use it everyday.) It's classified under "
nuisance dust", which means may cause irritation when inhaled. In other words it may give you some asthma like effects temporarily, pulmonary obstruction until you cough it out eventually (you'll know if you inhale it, which is comforting to me.).
Possible chronic Health Effects caused by heavy occupational dust exposures may cause chronic rhinitis, chronic bronchitis, impaired pulmonary function, resemblance of silicosis without any fibrosis, functional change in trachea or bronchi, chronic pulmonary edema.
(Heavy exposure is something I almost left out because it
does not, concern us vapers whatsoever. You'd literally have to take a few feet of the stuff, dry burn it into titanium dioxide powder, and inhale that daily. Which is unrealistic, more like impossible.)
So for absolute, basically impossible worst case scenario, it was cause lesions (in animals, no studies/evidence for humans) in the respiratory tract when inhaled constantly over a period of days. (Which again, no vaper that isn't trying to end their life will EVER be subjected to these amounts!)
So the experiment on the poor mousey's ended well anyway, basically they were exposed to a constant level of Titanium Di-oxide dust in the air for 3 weeks, maintained by aerosol, and they experienced "carcinogenic" effects, which doesn't always mean cancer mind you. They had higher numbers of alveolar macrophages, and lung lesions (which are technically tumors, but not the cancerous type), these tumors were completely healed 3 weeks post-experiment. So for 3 weeks the mice were bombarded with more titanium rust than any vaper will ever come close to inhaling, and the health affects they encountered were small growths basically caused by the lungs trying to combat the constant irritation the TiO2 caused, which later healed and disappeared after being removed from the dust.
So what I'm understanding is; as long as there aren't any hidden production substances, or other metals added to the (pure) Titanium wire, then there's basically zero chance of any life altering side effects, let alone any effects under vaping circumstances! I think it's looking fairly promising, granted the wire may not be 100% pure elemental Titanium, and that's what my research was based off of. But titanium is known as a "cleaner" metal, there aren't any allergies associated with it, it's used in surgical instruments & prosthetic body parts (screws and rods also, I have some in my tib/fib), and it's extremely hard to break down. Besides, Titanium Di-Oxide is a main ingredient in sun-screen for christ sakes! I'm sure it won't give us all lung cancer, because factory workers have been inhaling grams of the stuff at least for decades, and they haven't documented any evidence of anything drastic, even at ludicrous inhalation levels.
Believe me, I'm not trying to be on team Titanium (although that has a nice ring to it), but empirically it's looks very promising. And there's a voice in the back of my head telling me, "Holy crap, look how fast that coil heated up, I'll vape it and just watch my health as I go!" I'm already looking for some myself, I bet it has a cleaner taste (then again I can't taste kanthal, nichrome, or Gplat, so we'll see I guess.), here's hoping it's in stock somewhere!
