Diacetyl in all custard flavors?

[Racehorse]

Maybe I'm over-thinking it, or not thinking hard enough...I don't know. But I have a hard time wrapping my head around all the "sky is falling" dialog I hear in these discussions about diketones. I mean honestly most people I know who vape are former smokers. The list of chemicals in cigarette smoke is long and scary. So I trade 200 chemicals for 2 or 3...I can live with that. Is that cavalier? I don't feel it is. I'm a nicotine addict. And having tried and failed quitting smoking via several nicotine replacement methods, I can't get too twisted up about a couple of chemicals in the one thing that's helped me not light up which is vaping. So you say there's no reason to use those particular flavors that are being labeled harmful, do you? Well it so happens that, like many others, those are the flavors I found to be most effective in helping me abstain from cigarettes. So yeah, I'll risk it. What I do find humorous is how so many of the educated act as though their steering clear of diketone-laden liquid makes their vaping habit something nearing pure or divine. Humbug! There is not enough evidence of the long-term effects of vaping to show what the real risks are. Heck I smoked for nearly 30 years before noticing any decline in my health. And even though there are studies proving some of the chemicals in custardy flavors as being deleterious, the absence of empirical evidence for vaping even unflavored liquid should not be confused as it being even a healthier choice. The only healthy inhalable thing is air...and much of that is questionable if not downright known to be harmful.

Is Al Gore on here too?

I read Dr. F's report. I also read Kurt's post on page 8 #304.

If you are calling out an ecig researcher, and a very advanced chemist who vapes, then I guess they are Al Gore, too.

read it and read it carefully.
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/media-general-news/517858-donate-dr-farsalinos-new-study.html

Understand, anything like BO is not soemthing that will make your lungs less useful...deleterious as you put it....it will render your lungs ....completely useless. We are talking lung transplant.

Not an avoidable risk I am personally willing to take. That's just me. :shrugs:

I'm sure people will spin it however they need to, I remember justifying smoking to myself because of my addiction. Worst decision I ever made. I rue the day I began smoking. Biggest regret of my life so far, and I am not a youngster, so I have a lot of bad decisions to compare it to

Unless you are saying that you cannot vape unless you can vape diketones. In that case, I do support you vaping diketones, because your only alternative then, is to go back to smoking.

For me, and many others, there are just so many other alternatives with elquid, too many.......I just don't feel that way at all. I can get used to anything if I try hard enough, and so...... I have.

 

[Racehorse]

As far as the 'flavors' used in these juices, they were tested in January apparently and the offending flavors replaced.

Which explains some of the bad reviews for the once most popular Vanilla Dream.

It's a tough decision. I used to eat things that I won't eat now. I still crave them sometimes ........

 

[SthrnCelt]

I can get used to anything if I try hard enough, and so...... I have.

Ok, fair enough. Yet you still choose to vape. So you vape, just not things you know have diketones. Am I out of line asking if you feel your vaping is 100% without risk just because you have identified which things have diketones in them and avoid them? I'm not trying to be argumentative, just very curious.

I think perhaps my meaning was not properly conveyed earlier. I'm not saying that diketones are not harmful. In a nutshell I'm saying vaping has not been around long enough to fully understand the true risks to health it brings. So just because certain chemicals or compounds are known hazards does not mean that vaping those liquids 100% free of them is healthier. To paraphrase from the show Cosmos, there are things we know, and things we know we don't know, and other things we don't know that we don't know. It's the latter, the unknown things about vaping that we don't realize are unknown which may potentially make what we believe to be a safe(r) alternative to cigarettes be in fact not entirely the case. My suspicion is that it is safer, but by how much none of us can say with certainty.These of course are my personal views but given enough time, like tobacco, the truth will out. And like most vapers who enjoy it, I hope the long term effects are as most people assume...virtually harmless. However, since that is not proven beyond doubt, the fact remains that there may be inherent risks we are not completely aware of and we all could be in for a rude awakening one day.

And as to your comment about spinning...justifying smoking...boy howdy! I am the king of justifying bad decisions and habits. I've heard it all and said it all till I believed my own bs. And while my comments about my apparent disregard for diketones in my favorite e-soup seems to be an extension of all my bs, I feel I have to decide whether to vape what works or smoke which I know without a doubt works. I lean on hope that my vaping diketones found in my DIY stuff won't kill me faster than the cigarettes certainly were doing.

 

[Stosh]

..... And like most vapers who enjoy it, I hope the long term effects are as most people assume...virtually harmless. However, since that is not proven beyond doubt, the fact remains that there may be inherent risks we are not completely aware of and we all could be in for a rude awakening one day...

At this point we only have medical statistics going back about 7 or 8 years, not truly long term. But a lot of vapers are going through chest x-rays, lung capacity tests, blood pressure, cholesterol tests, and a myriad of other pokes and prods (getting old sucks, a wonder we don't go postal on doctors more often..)....and they are showing improved health. True population level long term studies, no, not yet but the early returns are positive.

I reduced my inhalation intake of diketones by the greatest amount by giving up smoking, as Dr Farsalinos' study showed cigarette smoke to have 100 times the levels in them. I further reduced my intake by not using creamy flavors (because I don't like them), eliminating the worry of how well a particular vendor's product is tested. This has left me with may be even lower levels of naturally occurring diketones, likely the level you would get popping microwave popcorn, walking into a movie theater or brewing a pot of coffee. I'm will to risk these levels of diketones, as simply breathing the air around you contains tiny trace amounts of a whole host of nasty chemicals.

 

[AndriaD]

Andria I don't mean to throw rocks dear. I simply have a tough time with certain things which make no sense. Of course when there is a known risk a person who wants to avoid those risks should be able to do so unhindered. I just have issues with the whole thing and have read tons of comments (many derogatory) about folks' decision to vape the "bad" stuff all the while chucking huge volumes of yet-to-be-determined-safe stuff into their lungs with a 50w mod professing it to be a better choice. There's no evidence that's true over the long term...all I'm saying. But then again I'm up waaaaay past my bedtime so I may not realize how my crankiness may be coming across. Let me grab my blanket and pillow and try again tomorrow.

I think I was suffering the same malady at 2:17am.

Obviously there ARE a lot of things we still don't know about what dangers may present themselves in long-term vaping, just because it hasn't been around long enough yet for anything long-term to be known. And I'm sure that the flavors still are the weakest spot in our knowledge, simply because the multi-syllabic chemicals they use to make the flavors are just chemical soup, basically, which no one has yet spent a lot of years huffing, to see what they would do, but I also agree with you that those vaping under those kinds of extreme conditions (100 watts? 180 watts? WTH for?) are really pushing the envelope, since we don't yet even know what long-term vaping at TEN watts will do! I guess those extremists are our voluntary guinea pigs.

For a while I was a starry-eyed newbie, figuring that since this is so much better than smoking, how bad could it be? But, I have asthma, and one particular juice I was vaping was causing me a LOT of breathing issues -- just short of breath CONSTANTLY, and given that it's a pancake flavor, with the usual flavors involved that go with pancakes, I think there's a really good chance it's got some kind of diketones in it. They say the damage from diketones usually presents in such a way that a misdiagnosis of asthma or COPD is possible/likely -- well I've already got asthma, though it's usually pretty well controlled, but that juice was about to make me STOP breathing; that's when I got interested in the subject enough to go googling, and what I read about diketones was alarming to say the least.

So, for me, since I really like the bakery flavors, what I've decided is that I have to become a full-fledged DIYer -- a lot of the flavor mfrs are releasing new versions and new formulations without diketones, and I have to say, I trust the flavor mfrs who say "no diketones" a lot more than I trust ejuice makers with their 500% markup -- that kind of markup means they have every reason to use the cheapest possible ingredients, to inflate the profit margin still further, and right now there are NO regulations and a lot of vapers don't even yet know this danger exists. Hopefully that situation will change, in time, as vaping consumers make plain to ejuice makers that we just won't tolerate the inclusion of KNOWN toxic chemicals, but for now, we have to get proactive, particularly those like me who already have a serious lung dysfunction.

There's nothing we can do about dangers we don't yet know about, you're absolutely right about that. But to ignore the dangers we DO know about, that would be foolhardy in the extreme. For those willing to go the DIY route, I think this particular danger can be easily avoided.

Andria

 

[Mazinny]

Maybe I'm over-thinking it, or not thinking hard enough...I don't know. But I have a hard time wrapping my head around all the "sky is falling" dialog I hear in these discussions about diketones. I mean honestly most people I know who vape are former smokers. The list of chemicals in cigarette smoke is long and scary. So I trade 200 chemicals for 2 or 3...I can live with that. Is that cavalier? I don't feel it is. I'm a nicotine addict. And having tried and failed quitting smoking via several nicotine replacement methods, I can't get too twisted up about a couple of chemicals in the one thing that's helped me not light up which is vaping. So you say there's no reason to use those particular flavors that are being labeled harmful, do you? Well it so happens that, like many others, those are the flavors I found to be most effective in helping me abstain from cigarettes. So yeah, I'll risk it. What I do find humorous is how so many of the educated act as though their steering clear of diketone-laden liquid makes their vaping habit something nearing pure or divine. Humbug! There is not enough evidence of the long-term effects of vaping to show what the real risks are. Heck I smoked for nearly 30 years before noticing any decline in my health. And even though there are studies proving some of the chemicals in custardy flavors as being deleterious, the absence of empirical evidence for vaping even unflavored liquid should not be confused as it being even a healthier choice. The only healthy inhalable thing is air...and much of that is questionable if not downright known to be harmful.

Is Al Gore on here too?

I understand your point of view and you are the only one that can determine what level of risk you are willing to take. What i don't understand is you questioning others for having a lower threshold for risk than you do. What would be the harm if vendors and flavor makers test their product for diketone levels and disclose them so all vapers can make an informed decision. Your reaction might be, "umm ! 120 micrograms of diacetyl per ml ... delicious !! " and mine could be " wow too high ! not a risk i'm willing to take ". We would both be able to make a decision that would benefit us.

I can't speak for the " educated " vapers and whether they feel their diketone free juice is completely safe or " pure and divine ", but my position is that if a product is comprised of 10 different ingredients, two of which have been linked to specific ailments and the other eight not yet, the prudent thing for me to do is to eliminate those two, or use them only up to the levels that i think are safer. Of course this doesn't say anything about the long term safety of the other eight ingredients, which remain unknown.

P.S. Just because Al Gore says somehting, it doesn't make it untrue !!

 

[Mazinny]

I think I was suffering the same malady at 2:17am.

Obviously there ARE a lot of things we still don't know about what dangers may present themselves in long-term vaping, just because it hasn't been around long enough yet for anything long-term to be known. And I'm sure that the flavors still are the weakest spot in our knowledge, simply because the multi-syllabic chemicals they use to make the flavors are just chemical soup, basically, which no one has yet spent a lot of years huffing, to see what they would do, but I also agree with you that those vaping under those kinds of extreme conditions (100 watts? 180 watts? WTH for?) are really pushing the envelope, since we don't yet even know what long-term vaping at TEN watts will do! I guess those extremists are our voluntary guinea pigs.

For a while I was a starry-eyed newbie, figuring that since this is so much better than smoking, how bad could it be? But, I have asthma, and one particular juice I was vaping was causing me a LOT of breathing issues -- just short of breath CONSTANTLY, and given that it's a pancake flavor, with the usual flavors involved that go with pancakes, I think there's a really good chance it's got some kind of diketones in it. They say the damage from diketones usually presents in such a way that a misdiagnosis of asthma or COPD is possible/likely -- well I've already got asthma, though it's usually pretty well controlled, but that juice was about to make me STOP breathing; that's when I got interested in the subject enough to go googling, and what I read about diketones was alarming to say the least.

So, for me, since I really like the bakery flavors, what I've decided is that I have to become a full-fledged DIYer -- a lot of the flavor mfrs are releasing new versions and new formulations without diketones, and I have to say, I trust the flavor mfrs who say "no diketones" a lot more than I trust ejuice makers with their 500% markup -- that kind of markup means they have every reason to use the cheapest possible ingredients, to inflate the profit margin still further, and right now there are NO regulations and a lot of vapers don't even yet know this danger exists. Hopefully that situation will change, in time, as vaping consumers make plain to ejuice makers that we just won't tolerate the inclusion of KNOWN toxic chemicals, but for now, we have to get proactive, particularly those like me who already have a serious lung dysfunction.

There's nothing we can do about dangers we don't yet know about, you're absolutely right about that. But to ignore the dangers we DO know about, that would be foolhardy in the extreme. For those willing to go the DIY route, I think this particular danger can be easily avoided.

Andria

Just curious why you would trust the flavor houses more than the vendors ? Weren't at least a couple of them caught outright lying before ? I am bot comparing the trustworthiness ofliquid vendors with the flavor houses mind you, i personally would like to see third party verification in either case, but the reason i'm asking is i don't know much about the diy world and the different flavor companies and their track records.

 

[AndriaD]

Just curious why you would trust the flavor houses more than the vendors ? Weren't at least a couple of them caught outright lying before ? I am bot comparing the trustworthiness ofliquid vendors with the flavor houses mind you, i personally would like to see third party verification in either case, but the reason i'm asking is i don't know much about the diy world and the different flavor companies and their track records.

Well, economically speaking, if a flavor mfr goes to the trouble to release and market a whole new flavor or version of a flavor which is specifically marked "diketone free," I think there's far less reason for them to lie about it, than ejuice makers who don't disclose their ingredients for fear of revealing their "secret formula," who are also getting a 100%-500% markup on the cost of the ingredients that go into the juice -- which gives them EVERY reason to buy the cheapest no-name brands they can find, to further inflate the profit margin. I don't trust anyone who won't disclose their ingredients because they're afraid someone might copy or clone their work. Flavor mfrs know that if the public isn't satisfied with the flavors from that mfr, they'll buy from another, and that's also far less easy when you're talking about a proprietary recipe like ejuice.

Also, I've started buying all my flavors at bullcityvapor.com, *because* they so clearly mark the ones to be concerned about, for whatever reason. I don't know how bullcityvapor is acquiring the info, but they are clearly doing thorough due diligence, because I have checked flavors and one week they showed no "caution" background, but the very next week, they did, so bullcityvapor is trying very hard to apprise their customers of potential problems, as soon as they know of any concerns. It's not perfect, but in the absence of firm regulations, maybe the best that can be done, for those like me who do like those flavors, but would like to continue breathing.

Andria

 

[AndriaD]

As for whether vaping is "safe" -- the only way in which this question makes any sense at all is in relative terms. Is it safer than smoking? So far that seems to be about 95%-99% the case. Is it safer than NOT vaping? Almost certainly not, unless "not vaping" means going back to smoking.

We cannot know what may be revealed in the future. However, it is fairly certain that of those who now vape instead of smoke, if those people continued to smoke, many of them would not ever have a future to worry about. As an asthmatic, I'm fully aware that my best option would be to quit doing any of it, but after smoking for 39 years, I don't have that option; I can vape and not care that I'm not smoking, or I can smoke, because not smoking, without something to take its place, is just not possible -- I cannot make myself do it, it's simply too unpleasant. To judge from a lot I've read around here, I'm very far from the only one who feels that way.

Some people have expressed the idea that since we all spent umpteen years inhaling poison, we shouldn't care WHAT we inhale now, but that is simply wrong. I vape so I can refrain from destroying my lungs with cigarettes; I'm fully aware that vaping is still inhaling something other than regular ol air, and thus may pose some risks, but compared to smoking, those risks are extremely slight, so I choose to take those risks -- but where I *know* a hazard exists, I will try like hell to avoid it. Like driving a car -- it's hazardous as everything, but with attention, it can be made far less so, and most of us *would* swerve to avoid something that clearly poses a risk.

Andria

 

[SthrnCelt]

What i don't understand is you questioning others for having a lower threshold for risk than you do.

Neither do I. Where does that come from?

 

[stevegmu]

Very high powered vaping hasn't been around very long. How are do these chemicals react to 50 or more watts?

 

[thatrandy]

is it in LorAnn Oils Banana Cream Flavor

 

[Racehorse]

Of course this doesn't say anything about the long term safety of the other eight ingredients, which remain unknown.

If something is unknown, then there is really no reason for someone not continue to question it. IMHO.

 

[thegreatappreciator]

All I know for sure is that Diacetyl or not, I'm healthier than I've been in a decade since I started vaping. The flavors I love are the flavors I love....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Racehorse]

Ok, fair enough. Yet you still choose to vape. So you vape, just not things you know have diketones. Am I out of line asking if you feel your vaping is 100% without risk just because you have identified which things have diketones in them and avoid them? I'm not trying to be argumentative, just very curious. .

SthrnCelt, you are not out of line at all.

I do not feel vaping is 100% without risk.

It's just that I like the choice as to which risks I am willing to take. And I can't make that decision unless I have truthful information.

If a particular flavoring, ejuice, delivery device/coil, or mod has been explored and has components that sound *iffy* to me, I don't use them.

I do feel I have a right to certain information about products I buy. Don't tell me I'm vaping on stainless steel if it is chrome plated, etc. Don't tell me eliquds don't have diketones when they test positive for AP or diacetyl.

 

[bman1977]

I wouldn't use anything if it had that in it as well. I smoke premium liquids, don't want junk liquids from China.

Its really not junk liquids from china. "Premium" companies use them as well.