Donate to Dr Farsalinos' new study

[Mr.Mann]

In Dr Farsalinos' place, I would do the same: not name the the contaminated products.

You should be aware by now that my position is that vendors should be held to account on this and any other equally serious issue, since the quality and safety of inhalation products seems an important issue to me (though I respect the fact some simply don't care, and should be allowed to choose accordingly); so the reasons for this non-disclosure are significant. You will have to ask him to defend his actions here, not me, and as you funded the research then you do have the right to ask.

On the other hand I see no reason why he should not name the good-quality products.

It is better if scientists don't get involved in hand-to-hand fights, which is certainly what the result of revealing the offenders will create. Imagine if you have a major e-liquid business and are accused of supplying toxic products - would you do nothing and accept the sales crash? Maybe - and maybe not. Maybe you would attack the person who revealed the issue.

Scientists are better off pursuing the science and assisting others to fight the battles that result. And there would certainly be a few battles if he named the offenders.

This is the job of community/consumer associations or standards associations - not someone who has tried to help, and will inevitably receive a number of brickbats if he goes any further. He will be contacting the vendors of the toxic products and giving them the results. If you want a public naming and shaming then ask your consumer org to do that for you: it's their job, and we now know they can raise the funds to do it in no time at all.

If I were still involved with a consumer group I'd start to move on this as we now have (a) the information from Dr F that this is something that needs addressing, and (b) the knowledge that funds can be specifically raised for this purpose immediately. Ask your consumer reps what plans they have, and if not - why not.

This is a fight for consumer groups not the whistleblower.

I know your stance on this and I don't mean to ask you like you have the answers, but I think the conversation can spur a lot. I will direct the questions to him from now on, unless I just have to respond to your position.

Who knows, maybe in the previous study where the vendors and liquids were named it did in fact cause the kind of problems you mention might happen here. Dunno.

 

[LaraC]

As always, thanks to Dr F for all the great work. As close to the patron saint of vaping that we're likely to get.

Yes! He certainly is.

Anybody else wonder what we would know about e-cigarettes if Dr Farsalinos was research director of a group with a $270 million budget with his follow the science attitude.

Instead we get glANTZ type of "research", the what outcome do you need brand.

Yes.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ealth-impact-smokers-who-switched-vaping.html

It's really a shame that a goodly portion of the millions the FDA plans to spend on research will never go toward Dr. Farsalino's scrupulously scientific work.

 

[Jman8]

I don't see why a consumer group would pay for this without being able to exercise how the results will be disseminated up front. Consumers paid to find out that 70% of potentially all products have a toxicity issue of some sort, and then told this is not the business of the consumer to get those details. If that makes perfect sense to a particular consumer, then go ahead and make the payments you feel are necessary, but unless willing to discuss that with others, it seems like a tough case to sell others on what is being paid for.

Again, I don't see this as significant issue. Whatever is in there, I believe someone will find some degree of harm with, regardless of the substance. And then others will be glad to take the molehill of an issue and make it seem like it is a mountain that you absolutely ought to care about if you know what's good for you. While there will be others who are using reason (and own bias) to insist on, no really this is a molehill.

Having a vendor/manufacture put into words "we are diacetyl free" doesn't make for science and can make for erroneous claim. Thus, any consumer who says, "I know what's in my juice" and is basing it on a claim, is adhering not to science but to credibility (or really faith).

Before this study, we (anecdotally) knew that vaping was better than smoking, but not harmless.
After this study, can someone let me know anything that we learned differently.

 

[tj99959]

I don't see why a consumer group would pay for this without being able to exercise how the results will be disseminated up front. Consumers paid to find out that 70% of potentially all products have a toxicity issue of some sort, and then told this is not the business of the consumer to get those details. If that makes perfect sense to a particular consumer, then go ahead and make the payments you feel are necessary, but unless willing to discuss that with others, it seems like a tough case to sell others on what is being paid for.

Again, I don't see this as significant issue. Whatever is in there, I believe someone will find some degree of harm with, regardless of the substance. And then others will be glad to take the molehill of an issue and make it seem like it is a mountain that you absolutely ought to care about if you know what's good for you. While there will be others who are using reason (and own bias) to insist on, no really this is a molehill.

Having a vendor/manufacture put into words "we are diacetyl free" doesn't make for science and can make for erroneous claim. Thus, any consumer who says, "I know what's in my juice" and is basing it on a claim, is adhering not to science but to credibility (or really faith).

Before this study, we (anecdotally) knew that vaping was better than smoking, but not harmless.
After this study, can someone let me know anything that we learned differently.

No problem ........... we learned that we can make vaping even less harmful than it is now.

The good news is it won't be all that hard to do.

 

[Jman8]

No problem ........... we learned that we can make vaping even less harmful than it is now.

Remains to be seen.

The good news is it won't be all that hard to do.

Spoken while an industry kinda thought they addressed this specific issue a couple years ago and was advertising themselves as such. "All our products are diacetyl-free." See, wasn't that easy?

 

[Jman8]

I'd like to know how this naturally occurring byproduct, present in micrograms, is so easily removed.

 

[KFarsalinos]

Goals met. Solution well-stated. Task completed.






Not wanting to sound "non-altruistic" but interested in your opinions on this, @Mann and @Mogli:

Since the figure was over 70% across many different vendors: if a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th study, with different vendors, the outcomes (%) would be roughly the same, don't you think?

Should there be an onus on researchers to conclude their scientific studies by hiring a team of telephone/email squads to perform "alert services" for an entire industry? How many hundreds of eliquid vendors (as well as flavor manufacturers) would they be needing to call? How many weeks time and how much additional staff would required to perform those follow-up services?

I would suggest more "crowd-funding" for that, but then I also thought: Vapers are paying top dollar for eliquids. Should the customer have to fund any and all additional requirements for ecig businesses as well? So many eliquid vendors have way past a million$ in sales, what they keep in profits puts food on their table, same as you and me.

The difference is that nobody is funding business improvements for my own business. I am paying for those myself, out of my profits or out of business loans.......... As a result, I can't afford to pay for somebody else's.......

Just being a realist and also, honest.

I agree that it is not the vapers' job to fund research. We have no other otpion than crowdfunding, and we mostly hope to attract VENDORS through the crowdfunding, not vapers.

 

[KFarsalinos]

I think we all would go along with this if the "testing is not cost-prohibitive" thing holds to be true. I am very curious what your professional opinion is with the alleged cost for FDA testing of products, which is allegedly $334,000 per product (i.e. each flavor)? That strikes me as outlandish (and for sure cost prohibitive). And so, I'm interested in what actual researcher thinks about that cost estimation.

If the FDA regulations become law, e-cigarettes will disappear.

 

[KFarsalinos]

The cost of any testing is dependant on what is being tested for. Testing for two chemicals will be many times cheaper than testing for the dozens that would be necessary for FDA regulation.

Dr Farsalinos, is it possible for you to...

1. Give us a form of words that we can use to ask a liquid manufacturer whether a particular liquid has an appropriate level of diacetyl et al.?
2. Give us a form of words that we can use to ask an analysis laboratory to test that a particular liquid has an appropriate level of diacetyl et al.?
3. Suggest a ball-park cost that we might expect to face for testing a single liquid or a small handful of liquids?

I suppose that the limit of (3) would be $33,523/159 = $211 per liquid, but I assume there is some labour overhead in there and maybe a bulk/academic discount.

Our study was more expensive because we verified most of the samples by testing them with a second analytical method. As you can understand, we wanted to be absolutely certain that our results are correct before publishing anything!!
It is important that the methodology used to analyze for diacetyl and acetyl propionyl has very low limits of detection. I have seen negative results but with limits of detection in the range of milligrams per ml. This is unacceptably high and in reality gives absolutely no information.

 

[KFarsalinos]

I'd like to know how this naturally occurring byproduct, present in micrograms, is so easily removed.

Make sure not to use natural extracts, and make sure the synthetically-produced natural flavors are diacetyl-free. That is an easy way to do it.

 

[KFarsalinos]

It would be extremely difficult for Dr Farsalinos to reveal the names of the contaminated products, even the most toxic products. What he could do on the other hand is name the products that he found to be contaminate-free. I don't see any problem with that.

Of course, this sort of testing is exactly the sort of thing that the consumer associations should be doing. That is their purpose in life: to protect the consumer. We now have the proof that the community can easily raise funds for this sort of project, therefore if one of the community associations steps up and says:
- We want to raise $20,000 for e-liquid testing
- We will specifically test for known toxic contaminants such as DEG, DA and AP
- We will name all of the products in our report
- We will provide full details of how each sample measured up and name names

...then I think they will (a) be able to raise the funds; (b) perform an extremely valuable service to the community; and (c) force the trade to do a whole lot better. Vendors who get a bad report will see their sales drop and that is exactly how it should be.

This is not Dr F's responsibility as he is pursuing the science, and is not in a position to take on the responsibility of defending his actions. This is the job of consumer associations and they need to step up. Dr F has shown the way.

I don't think it is as easy as that. Any organization has a limited budget, thus he will examine a very small list of the huge variety of flavors available in the market. Based on what criteria will you choose the samples to be tested and then present the names of the vendors? What will other vendors say if they are not chosen to be tested?
I don't think there is any other way of controlling what is in the market besides pushing companies to test their own samples. Any other kind of testing (like our study) is done only to identify a potential problem by examining a small representative sample. Then, the solution should come through the actions of every vendor separately.

By the way, we specifically mention that we examined only sweet flavors. Thus, when we report 74% of the sampels being positive for diacetyl and/or acetyl propionyl, we refer to sweet flavors only. We expect this to be smaller when you consider other types of flavors.

 

[Jman8]

If the FDA regulations become law, e-cigarettes will disappear.

....to the black market.

I think you left that part off.

A market where anecdotal evidence is sufficient.

 

[tj99959]

I don't think it is as easy as that. Any organization has a limited budget, thus he will examine a very small list of the huge variety of flavors available in the market. Based on what criteria will you choose the samples to be tested and then present the names of the vendors? What will other vendors say if they are not chosen to be tested?
I don't think there is any other way of controlling what is in the market besides pushing companies to test their own samples. Any other kind of testing (like our study) is done only to identify a potential problem by examining a small representative sample. Then, the solution should come through the actions of every vendor separately.

By the way, we specifically mention that we examined only sweet flavors. Thus, when we report 74% of the sampels being positive for diacetyl and/or acetyl propionyl, we refer to sweet flavors only. We expect this to be smaller when you consider other types of flavors.

Does "sweet flavors" include fruit flavors?

 

[Mr.Mann]

Dr.F, I ask this respectfully, but can you explain to me why the previous test on the cytotoxicity of some tobacco eliquid posted who and what was tested but this one does not?

When the "cinnamon scare" happened, it happened without any vendors being particularly attached to it, so it stands to reason that even providing a (what essentially amounts to) secrecy for vendors to not be outed won't stop any similar, albeit misguided, scare by those who do not want anything to do with these substances.

I personally don't see any vendors being irreparably hurt by this (by being specified), and if anything, all vendors now stand to be hurt by ~70% of sweet flavors being linked to diacetyl (though I bet it's much more targeted than merely "sweet"). But, as I alluded to earlier, for many vapers out there, they have already publicly stated that they couldn't care less about any amounts of diacetyl, no matter what any study says.

So it is my position that those that do care -- people like me who funded this and people who just care -- are the ones that will want to know specifics, but we will be the ones without what we want.

The vendors will get what they want -- to not be named.

Vapers who knowingly vape these flavors will get what they want -- no real incentive for those flavors to be pulled off the shelves.

 

[Jman8]

Make sure not to use natural extracts, and make sure the synthetically-produced natural flavors are diacetyl-free. That is an easy way to do it.

So to help my/our understanding all eLiquid manufacturers that actually use natural extracts are diacetyl-free, without question, yes?

Seems hard to understand based on what I asked (naturally occurring byproduct), but as you are the actual researcher and I a layperson, I think we will all defer to your expertise.

 

[Mr.Mann]

....to the black market.

I think you left that part off.

A market where anecdotal evidence is sufficient.

That'll look like what? What we have now I imagine (I think you are saying this). Oh well, I don't know what's what now and won't then. Vape on.

So to help my/our understanding all eLiquid manufacturers that actually use natural extracts are diacetyl-free, without question, yes?

Seems hard to understand based on what I asked (naturally occurring byproduct), but as you are the actual researcher and I a layperson, I think we will all defer to your expertise.

Just the opposite. He said "not to use natural extracts." Though, that is quite vast and broad. Would a natural blueberry have diacetyl?

 

[xtwosm0kesx]

Make sure not to use natural extracts, and make sure the synthetically-produced natural flavors are diacetyl-free. That is an easy way to do it.

So to help my/our understanding all eLiquid manufacturers that actually use natural extracts are diacetyl-free, without question, yes?

Seems hard to understand based on what I asked (naturally occurring byproduct), but as you are the actual researcher and I a layperson, I think we will all defer to your expertise.

Also no idea why people (referring to no-one in particular) are copping an attitude with a man who is doing nothing but trying to help us/make vaping safer.

 

[tj99959]

So to help my/our understanding all eLiquid manufacturers that actually use natural extracts are diacetyl-free, without question, yes?

Seems hard to understand based on what I asked (naturally occurring byproduct), but as you are the actual researcher and I a layperson, I think we will all defer to your expertise.

Make sure not to use natural extracts,

I think you missed a word (if I'm understanding your response correctly)

 

[Jman8]

Just the opposite. He said "not to use natural extracts." Though, that is quite vast and broad. Would a natural blueberry have diacetyl?

Yep, I misread that. Thanks for pointing it out.

So, then I guess I wonder how to make sure synthetically-produced natural flavors (which seems like any oxymoron to me) are diacetyl-free? I'll admit it sounds easy with just using words.

Also wondering, aren't the natural-extract juices usually the high-end 'gourmet' type?

 

[Mr.Mann]

Yep, I misread that. Thanks for pointing it out.

So, then I guess I wonder how to make sure synthetically-produced natural flavors (which seems like any oxymoron to me) are diacetyl-free? I'll admit it sounds easy with just using words.

Also wondering, aren't the natural-extract juices usually the high-end 'gourmet' type?

And BINGO was his name-o.

..............................​

The last words on the "What We Need & What You Get" section of the page at Indidegogo that asks for funding says this:

The study and all details will be published in an international medical journal.