Check my math

[James Wall]

Alright, I'm not a math wiz or a chemist, but this has been bothering me since I ran across the nicotine content of certain foods. Now I need someone to tell me if my math's off or if my whole concept is just whooey because of differences in types of nicotine.

Okay, so peppers are supposed to contain 9.2 mg/100g of nicotine right? 1 gram = 1 mL therefore peppers contain nicotine at a ratio of 0.92 mg/10 mL. A serving size of peppers is listed as approximately 75 grams. So a serving of peppers contains 6.9 mg of nicotine or, to put it in terms of a 10 mL bottle, 0.69 mg/10 mL.

Now, I'm vaping nicotine at a ratio of 18 mg/L, translating this down to a 10 mL bottle means a nicotine ratio of 0.18 mg/10 mL. I vape about 1 mL every day on a long day (let's say an 18 hour day) and so I am taking in 0.018 mg of nicotine per day or approximately 0.001 mg/hour.

I think you may see what I think I'm seeing here...eating a serving of peppers would be the equivilent of...well...a heck of a lot of vaping.

 

[markfm]

Off by a factor of 1000. eliquid nic is mg/ml, not mg/l. A semi-typical vaper might use 3 ml/day of 18 mg/ml liquid, so that's 54 mg of nicotine over the course of the day.

The above ignores the absorption of the nicotine in the vapor, both quantity and rate. I've seen numbers all around the board, but I doubt it's 100% absorption, but it does appear to be a relatively rapid uptake -- I seem to feel the nic kicking in within a fairly short time. Likewise, in the eating peppers case the absorption through ingestion is likely different from vaping -- zero clue how much, or at what rate, it actually makes it into the blood stream.

 

[gice]

i'm no wiz/chemist either but absorption rate is probably a factor.

The nicotine contents of vegetables
MMS: Error

 

[James Wall]

I knew it looked wrong. Nuts.

My 10 mL bottle does last me from 10 -14 days though, so somewhere under 1 mL/day. So by the theory of 6.9 mg for peppers, would vaping at my level then be the nicotine equivalent of eating about 6 peppers/day?

 

[markfm]

If 10 ml lasts 10 days, you're using about 1 ml/day, so that's 18 mg of nic over the course of a day, could be as low as 13 mg if it lasts 14 days.

If you have 6.9 mg peppers, that's roughly 2 peppers equivalent of nic.

The above is absolutely ignoring differences in absorption % (how much vapor nic from that 1 ml you're absorbing, how much of the pepper nic gets absorbed), as well as rate (when you do vape, the nic gets absorbed faster than eating a pepper)

I get more pleasure vaping than eating peppers, so I've exhausted my knowledge on this

 

[James Wall]

Thanks Mark and Gice. So about 2 peppers worth of nicotine per day barring absorption rates. Interesting bit of knowledge to have.

 

[gice]

When i'm feeling tired and lazy, hot chili peppers gets me going. Instead of coffee, i think i'll start my mornings this way. Hm...

Cool article: F a t i g u e Won't Quit? Here's 3 Natural Fixes for More Vigor and Stamina |

 

[Mister]

Thanks Mark and Gice. So about 2 peppers worth of nicotine per day barring absorption rates. Interesting bit of knowledge to have.

Still off by a factor of 1,000 I think. The content of peppers that you read was probably expressed as µg/100g. µg means micrograms, not milligrams. 9.2 µg/100g would be rather high for food (see page 15 at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/P278_Nicotine_FAR_Final.pdf) but not implausible. Assuming 9.2 µg/100g, you'd need to eat about two hundred kilograms of peppers in a day to ingest as much nicotine as is in 1 ml of your e-liquid.

 

[James Wall]

Most nicotine content in foods that I have found are in nanograms, but peppers are expressed in milligrams...

"Peppers and capsicums also contain solanine and solanadine, nicotine alkaloids, just like the other nightshade family plants. Common peppers have a solanine concentration of 7.7 - 9.2 mg per 100 grams of serving."

http://ezinearticles.com/?6-Common-Foods-With-Nicotine-Content&id=4922576

On the other hand, searching several other sites mention numbers in micrograms...I'm thinking this article is maybe a typo?

 

[VeeDubb65]

i'm no wiz/chemist either but absorption rate is probably a factor.

This is true, and makes the math irrelevant.

Inhaled nicotine is absorbed by the lungs, which is the most direct route to your blood stream other than a needle. Nicotine in foods would have a minimal amount of time to absorb through the skin of the mouth and throat before it hits the stomach, where it is not only absorbed very slowly, but also broken down by stomach acids and enzymes. If you look at a PDR¹, you'll see that almost everything has two different LD50s² listed. One for ingestions, and one for injection. The one for injection is what is used for inhalants. You'll see that for most chemicals, the two are DRASTICALLY different.



¹ PDR = Physician's Desk Reference. It's a standard reference text on thousands of chemicals and their medical effects.

² LD50 is short for Lethal Dose, 50%. In other words, it's the dosage that is required to cause a 50% chance of killing you.

 

[Mister]

"... Common peppers have a solanine concentration of 7.7 - 9.2 mg per 100 grams of serving."

Ummm, that's solanine, not nicotine. And the article cites no references. Without checkable references I won't assume it is correct even about the solanine content.