Diacetyl exposure graphed.

[Kent C]

I believe the people who were cited for the bold part, claimed that this false. They wrote a response to the study you are citing. Let's see if i can find it. I believe Dr. F also wrote a response to the Pierce study you are citing.

And this from their conflict of interest statement :

All the authors are employed by Cardno ChemRisk, a consulting firm that provides scientific advice to the government, corporations, law firms and various scientific/professional organizations. Cardno ChemRisk has been engaged by several manufacturers and suppliers of diacetyl and diacetyl-containing flavorings in various litigation matters, and two of the authors (Drs. Pierce and Finley) have served as experts in diacetyl litigation. However, no external funding was received for the study, the research supporting the analysis, nor the time needed to prepare the article.

I'd like to see the responses if you can find them**. But regardless, as far as conflict of interest goes - this is the same on both sides. Studies done with FDA funding or other gov't grants tend to come up with conclusions that the gov't supports. OR those who are anti-business or are suing businesses to get substantial settlements. Those that offer opposing views are from either from businesses or rights based organizations. It's the 'Dueling Science' that's mentioned in the video posted in another thread. We see this in the studies here every day.

One case of BO related to popcorn was an individual (not a factory worker) - Wayne Watson - who says he ate 2 bags of microwave popcorn per day from 2001- 2008 (going on memory here). He worked at a carpet chemical business for three years before that and had previous health issues including pneumonia - prior to his popcorn eating binge. He was awarded $5.2 million by a liberal judge in the 10th circuit, against Kroger, and other companies - whoever made the popcorn... Not only is there dueling science, but dueling justice.

**edit.
Donate to Dr Farsalinos' new study

Ok I found one comment by Dr. F regarding this on ECF. Although I must say, that what he says before his comment on Pierce - "we absolutely disagree with the conclusions by Pierce et al."..... is more consistent with Jennifer Pierce's conclusions. Dr F: "Bronchiolitis obliterans is not caused by smoking, you are right." and "The incidence of bronchiolitis obliterans by diacetyl exposure is extremely low." Both statements confirm Pierce's studies. So I think 'absolutely disagree' is a bit hyperbolic, since he says he agrees with the main point of 'not caused by smoking'.

It's the 'misdiagnosis' hypothesis - that Dr. F seems to be leaning on. And I'd have to see more studies backing up that hypothesis. I know, as I mentioned elsewhere, that I'm aware of what the hypothesis consists and how it could be misdiagnosed but for me it's a stretch.

 

[VNeil]

So? He's trying to compare results found in one comparison to others using different base measurements in
different mediums. Unless his conversions are at fault there should be no problem.
Of course I'm not the one to fact check that.
Regards
Mike

He is comparing weights and converting everything to weights. The density of water is not involved in any way with the computation of the amount of diacetyl in the ambient air of the factory. It's very clear to me... his "conversion" here is truly at fault. It's not really a conversion though, just a constant defining the density of air (for simplicity in my calculation at sea level).

 

[Mazinny]

I'd like to see the responses if you can find them. But regardless, as far as conflict of interest goes - this is the same on both sides. Studies done with FDA funding or other gov't grants tend to come up with conclusions that the gov't supports. OR those who are anti-business or are suing businesses to get substantial settlements. Those that offer opposing views are from either from businesses or rights based organizations. It's the 'Dueling Science' that's mentioned in the video posted in another thread. We see this in the studies here every day.

One case of BO related to popcorn was an individual (not a factory worker) - Wayne Watson - who says he ate 2 bags of microwave popcorn per day from 2001- 2008 (going on memory here). He worked at a carpet chemical business for three years before that and had previous health issues including pneumonia - prior to his popcorn eating binge. He was awarded $5.2 million by a liberal judge in the 10th circuit, against Kroger, and other companies - whoever made the popcorn... Not only is there dueling science, but dueling justice.

here's the response from Muge Akpinar :
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I can't find the Dr. F response. I saw it in a post either here or on Reddit in the last few days though i believe, will look a little more.

 

[Kent C]

here's the response from Muge Akpinar :
An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

I can't find the Dr. F response. I saw it in a post either here or on Reddit in the last few days though i believe, will look a little more.

Thanks. I found it or I found one of his statements concerning it - see my 'edit' above.

 

[Kent C]

here's the response from Muge Akpinar :
An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

And in keeping with the 'dueling science' theme, here was Pierce's response to Akpinar-Elci and Elci.

An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

"Akpinar-Elci and Elci suggest that we “falsely” claimed that “all of the cohorts evaluated had considerable smoking histories”. To support their assertion, they offer a non- sequitur: of the nine alleged cases of bronchiolitis obliterans in their cohort, a majority (6/9) were current or former smokers. Unfortunately, they seem to have confused the terms “cohort” and “case”. To reiterate, all food/flavoring cohorts studied to date had a significant fraction of current/former smokers, and indeed in the Akpinar-Elci et al. analyses of the Gilster-Mary Lee (GML) workers, nearly 50% of the study participants were current smokers.

They also appear to believe that, because most of the alleged cases of bronchiolitis obliterans in their cohort (8/9) were not current smokers, then smoking was not a confounder in their study. They have unintentionally reinforced our point. Cigarette smoke contains high levels of diacetyl, therefore workers who smoke have much higher diacetyl exposures than the non-smoking food/flavoring workers. More importantly, even though smokers arguably have the highest peak and cumulative diacetyl exposures of any definable cohort, smoking is not a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans. These observations argue against a relationship between diacetyl exposure and bronchiolitis obliterans. Finally, they have confused “controlling for the effects of smoking on respiratory function” (which they did do) versus “accounting for the relatively large diacetyl exposure from smoking when assessing the exposure-response relationship between diacetyl inhalation and respiratory function in food/flavoring workers” (which they certainly did not do)."

An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

 

[Mazinny]

And in keeping with the 'dueling science' theme, here was Pierce's response to Akpinar-Elci and Elci.

An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

"Akpinar-Elci and Elci suggest that we “falsely” claimed that “all of the cohorts evaluated had considerable smoking histories”. To support their assertion, they offer a non- sequitur: of the nine alleged cases of bronchiolitis obliterans in their cohort, a majority (6/9) were current or former smokers. Unfortunately, they seem to have confused the terms “cohort” and “case”. To reiterate, all food/flavoring cohorts studied to date had a significant fraction of current/former smokers, and indeed in the Akpinar-Elci et al. analyses of the Gilster-Mary Lee (GML) workers, nearly 50% of the study participants were current smokers.

They also appear to believe that, because most of the alleged cases of bronchiolitis obliterans in their cohort (8/9) were not current smokers, then smoking was not a confounder in their study. They have unintentionally reinforced our point. Cigarette smoke contains high levels of diacetyl, therefore workers who smoke have much higher diacetyl exposures than the non-smoking food/flavoring workers. More importantly, even though smokers arguably have the highest peak and cumulative diacetyl exposures of any definable cohort, smoking is not a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans. These observations argue against a relationship between diacetyl exposure and bronchiolitis obliterans. Finally, they have confused “controlling for the effects of smoking on respiratory function” (which they did do) versus “accounting for the relatively large diacetyl exposure from smoking when assessing the exposure-response relationship between diacetyl inhalation and respiratory function in food/flavoring workers” (which they certainly did not do)."

lol ... is there a response to this response !

 

[Kent C]

lol ... is there a response to this response !

Lol... I looked. So far none. That second 'error' link has a bit more that I find interesting as well.

"As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted when
referring to the benefits of transparency, “ sunlight is said to
be the best of disinfectants ” . Let us shed some sunlight onto
the above claim."

I also think this calls into question the 'absolutely disagree with Pierce' statement, as they do go into 'other lung related diseases' and other causes of those diseases.

 

[Jman8]

Really? You think people who've smoked for decades, who've never been able to stop for more than a few days at best using any other method are going to be able to switch from smoking to vaping without nicotine in their vape? I'm sorry, but I find that notion so absurd that I'm not even going to respond to the rest of your post.

Correct, it is not essential for all vapers to have it in there. Plenty of vapers have shown it to be non-essential to what they choose to vape. Many of these being first time vapers.

Your point is like saying if someone smokes other stuff and they come to vaping, then 'other stuff' is now an essential ingredient for all vapers.

That be absurd.

 

[Rossum]

Sure, plenty of vapers have weaned themselves off nicotine after they successfully switched tov vaping. But I don't know a single one that switched from a decades-long cigarette habit to vaping using zero-nic juice, do you?

 

[Jman8]

Sure, plenty of vapers have weaned themselves off nicotine after they successfully switched tov vaping. But I don't know a single one that switched from a decades-long cigarette habit to vaping using zero-nic juice, do you?

You missed my point.

 

[Kent C]

My concerns regarding diacetyl and and acetylpropionyl just decreased significantly.
Not entirely, but significantly.

For some reason (I think I know why - gov't schools, gov't lapdog media and Hollywood) people tend to think that businesses are responsible for all that is bad in the world, when in fact, governments of all kinds throughout history, have a corner on that market.

That doesn't stop juries from taking junk science as "truth". So whether it is the popcorn factory, Dow Chemical (breast implants), second hand smoke studies, diacetyl in cigarettes or coffee or any flavoring, there is a built in bias (by brainwashing) that tends to prejudices science and court cases against business. This is not to say that some businesses have been culpable, but the bias continues despite having found, subsequently the science brought forth in some of these cases is junk. The breast implant info is just one of many - discussed in this article:

The Decade of 'Junk Science'

... from a few decades back but the practice is still going strong....

" A four-member expert panel appointed by U.S. District Court judge Samuel Pointer reached a similar conclusion last December. It reported that “No association was evident between breast implants and any of the individual connective tissue diseases, all definite connective diseases combined, or the other autoimmune heumatic conditions.” None of this means that many, if not most, plaintiffs were not ill. But there is no evidence that implants are at fault. As Dr. Angell puts it: Women have “been told they might get sick because of the implants. They’ve developed symptoms that any women over 25 could develop.” Because the evidence was so overwhelming, the vast majority of court cases have gone for the defendants. But that doesn’t mean justice was done. As Bernstein points out, “sometimes a lawyer can win just by getting the game in play. Deterred by the possibility of large awards by unpredictable juries, high legal costs, and the notoriety of a trial, many defendants can be induced to offer huge settlements.” In the United States, it is too late to undo the damage suffered by implant makers. But judicial and legislative reform could prevent a repeat performance in another industry."

------
The: 'none of this means... the patients were not ill' points to the 'confounding factors' that have been brought up by Pierce's studies in diacetyl, and many others that have more correlation than causation, with even the correlation suspect. And the last line (underlined) was more hopeful that is warranted - as we have seen.

The fact is, that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I'm guessing few know the eventual medical outcome of the implants. If you'd ask 10 people on the street today, 10 may still be under the impression that they are harmful. Which points to exactly what the Harvard study may do to ecigarettes - not just now, but decades from now. I also think that they rely on that.

 

[sofarsogood]

I know a kid who works in a vape shop and vapes around 30 ml per day. He uses giant dual coil rda setups and fires them at 80 watts. I would not want to be vaping that much. I'm at 6 ml per day and would like to reduce that an ml or two just to reduce the potential for irritation. I'd like to reduce mg of nic from 70 mg to 25 mg (mostly so my stash lasts longer). I'm trying to avoid vape creep so stick to single coils, 440 is my maximum temp and 30 max watts in TC mode is the highest I'll let that go. In the shop I leave my rig on my bench when I'm on the floor just so I take a few less puffs. If I can't control consumption no stash will be big enough. It's ironic. I have 3 liters of nic in the freezer with 300,000 mg of nic. If I use 70 mg per day it would last 10-12 years. If I keep it at 25 mg it would last 30 years. (I'll mix for my brother if necessary so in a worst case scenario my stash is cut in half by that.) I don't want to overdo the hoarding thing. That can get neurotic.

In the beginning I thought may be now I don't have to hold back. I can vape as much as I want without a care. Nope, sorry, no love there.

 

[VNeil]

Just a note to say that the linked article was modified to use the correct computation of density in air. That should resolve the debate we had last night over that matter. He used a different number than I suggested here, to account for the actual density of airborne diacetyl I guess.

 

[LaraC]

VNeil, I just want to say that I was impressed with the way you and Shawn Avery (author of the article) went about discussing and correcting the error. It was nice to see you both working it out together, the way scientists who are interested in accuracy should.

The civil, rational exchange you two had in the comments section below the article was a pleasure to read.

Soooo different from the defensive, hostile reaction of the Portland bunch when problems with their "formaldehyde" study (and with their conclusions) were pointed out to them some months ago.

skoony's original link, now showing the corrections:
Everybody is talking about vaping and "popcorn lung" again, so here's a graph

 

[VNeil]

VNeil, I just want to say that I was impressed with the way you and Shawn Avery (author of the article) went about discussing and correcting the error. It was nice to see you both working it out together, the way scientists who are interested in accuracy should.

The civil, rational exchange you two had in the comments section below the article was a pleasure to read.

Soooo different from the defensive, hostile reaction of the Portland bunch when problems with their "formaldehyde" study (and with their conclusions) were pointed out to them some months ago.

skoony's original link, now showing the corrections:
Everybody is talking about vaping and "popcorn lung" again, so here's a graph

All the credit goes to Shawn, who quickly recognized the error and corrected it (improving on my suggested value).