E-Cigarettes Under Fire--WebMD Article

[Spikey]

If you read Kate's other posts you will see this was not meant as a nasty comment... just a curiosity. She is on an endless search for the truth We all are... since there is so much BS here online.

Is that fact or opinion, do you know the risks of vaping?

 

[Kate]

Oops, sorry, did it sound abrupt?

What I'm wondering is how the magnitude of risk can be stated. I know a fair bit about vaping and have very little idea of the scale of risk. If someone has facts that I'm not aware of I'd like to know what they are.

Thanks.

 

[Hangar]

yea i really tend to agree with the regulating issue as long as it was fair and reasonable (which is another topic altogether)...industry standardizing would be welcomed as far as im concerned and it would be nice to be assured of some consistency in what we're getting, especially in the liquids and carts...no matter who be buy it from.

also, i must have missed something about the risk factors as well...id like to know more.

 

[yvilla]

also, i must have missed something about the risk factors as well...id like to know more.

Previously posted - but I think you just didn't want to see it.

I'll quote David Sweanor, one more time:

"You've stated that electronic cigarettes are not safe, but that they are a lot better than cigarettes. Just how unsafe are they?

After many tens of thousands of research papers we know what causes the illnesses associated with smoking. In short, ‘it’s the smoke, stupid’. Non-combustion products will vary in their risks, but everything we can see about the sort of product sold in the West (whether smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes or medicinal nicotine) tells us that cigarettes are orders of magnitude more hazardous."

E Cigarette Interview with David Sweanor - Part 2

 

[Kate]

It's not really possible to define vaping in terms of how it might compare with smoking. There are lots of studies and facts known about smoking (some of them hyped) but all we can do with vaping is make educated guesses. Educated guesses are not a basis for stating facts. I'd just like people to stop making claims and statements as if they were fact without actually establishing what the facts are. It misleads us, it's a red flag to 'antis', it wrecks the credibility of the people making the claims and makes people cynical.

We don't know how vaping will work out in the long term and there is no way to accurately measure the risks because there are hardly any studies. To say that it's 2% as harmful as smoking is just plain asking for trouble. So the question seems to be 'just how unsafe are they?' Talking about smoking doesn't clear that up.

Working towards accurately assessing the risks rather than flatly denying them would be more helpful.

Hopefully we won't be telling these wishful thinkers 'it's the flavourings stupid' in ten years time when we might have lung disease.

 

[Hangar]

Previously posted - but I think you just didn't want to see it.

I'll quote David Sweanor, one more time:

"You've stated that electronic cigarettes are not safe, but that they are a lot better than cigarettes. Just how unsafe are they?


E Cigarette Interview with David Sweanor - Part 2

yeah no, sorry...i was actually referring to the risk factor numbers Bill had brought up before...just wanted to understand if there was anything published that supported it or not...technically speaking i mean.

btw yvilla...i did read that article like i mentioned...but i was never able to get a hold of any of the resources he used for some of his comments such as:
"We certainly know that inhaling a heated nicotine vapour into the lungs is one heck of a lot less hazardous than inhaling the same vapour along with the thousands of chemicals and dozens of known carcinogens that are inhaled when that vapour is delivered by smoking a cigarette."

But then he continues to say:
"An investigation to determine if the non-smoke vapour is, say, 1/100 or 1/1,000 the risk of cigarette smoking might be a good thing."

...which lead me to believe his remarks might have been more opinion than fact.

But i wasnt sure so I did check the site to see if i could find any links but i didnt see any...if you by chance (or anyone who's familiar with it) could post any links to that articles reference material id be very excited to read through it.

 

[Oldnamenomore]

yeah no, sorry...i was actually referring to the risk factor numbers Bill had brought up before...just wanted to understand if there was anything published that supported it or not...technically speaking i mean.

btw yvilla...i did read that article like i mentioned...but i was never able to get a hold of any of the resources he used for some of his comments such as:
"We certainly know that inhaling a heated nicotine vapour into the lungs is one heck of a lot less hazardous than inhaling the same vapour along with the thousands of chemicals and dozens of known carcinogens that are inhaled when that vapour is delivered by smoking a cigarette."

But then he continues to say:
"An investigation to determine if the non-smoke vapour is, say, 1/100 or 1/1,000 the risk of cigarette smoking might be a good thing."

...which lead me to believe his remarks might have been more opinion than fact.

But i wasnt sure so I did check the site to see if i could find any links but i didnt see any...if you by chance (or anyone who's familiar with it) could post any links to that articles reference material id be very excited to read through it.

we know inhaling PG is thought of as safe (their have been studies) we know inhaling nicotine vapors is thought of as safe (see nicotine inhalers) so it is not just opinion there is some factual basis in saying its a whole hell of a lot safer then smoking a cigarette

 

[Kate]

... We can take in large doses of nicotine which is a toxin.

Logic says that we can take in much more nicotine than with smoking although Ruyan research suggests less per puff (I dispute their figures, see - http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/general-e-smoking-discussion/6525-draws-puffs-per-ml.html and http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...7216-can-someone-help-me-math.html#post110153). We can also vape and get zero nicotine so I'd say it's a matter of education and making informed, responsible choices with available nicotine levels.

We don't know for sure how much of the nicotine we use transfers from liquid to our bloodstreams. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it can be well above our tolerance levels.

We don't know what prolonged inhaling of glycerine or PEG400 does to our bodies.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ble-glycerine-glycerol-safety-discussion.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...g-new-ingredient-instead-pg-vg.html#post91677

We don't know what prolonged inhaling of other additives and flavourings in eliquid does to our bodies.

"... I do think artificial flavors are a potential concern, and the biggest unknown..." - Leaford

GRAS (generally regarded as safe) chemicals may be safe to ingest but assumptions about safety to inhale are not valid - diacetyl, a food flavouring causes lung disease.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...oking/2666-inhaling-flavouring-chemicals.html

I guess assessing this risk requires information on ingredients in the eliquid we use, knowledge about our exposure levels (chronic/mild?) and information on how particular chemicals react and accumulate.
Dose-response relationship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We don't know how the cocktail of chemicals we inhale interacts.



We don't know if there are chemicals given off by the atomiser coil wick as it degrades.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...anufacturers-suppliers-whats-my-atomizer.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...12335-analysis-black-gunk-atomizer-coils.html

We don't know what type of plastics are used for storage or cartridges and if they leech chemicals.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/health-safety-e-smoking/2519-bpa-concern-e-smoking.html

"Most plastics do have to pass conformity tests." - 0ogier


We don't know what chemicals are given off by cartridge fillers when they are heated or burned.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/health-safety-e-smoking/992-danger-filter.html


We don't know about what sort of paint is used on devices, it could contain lead.

"Lead in paint - RoHS certification. Yes admittedly only for those tested but that is the same as enything."
- 0ogier

We don't know if there is a safety risk with having a battery/power supply so close to our faces.

"Battery / power supply close to head - I suppose you can look at mobile phones and hearing aids." - 0ogier

Faulty switches, chargers or batteries could cause fires.

"Charger safety risk / faults - CE certification" - 0ogier

We don't know if standards of hygiene or purity of product are maintained effectively at manufacturing facilities because there is no regulation of production.

"Hygene standards . Again by certification. ( in the case of my supplierSGS GMP Codex ,food hygene) ." - 0ogier

I might be wrong here but I've only noticed Chinese manufacturers getting certification for eliquid. European and US eliquid makers don't bother to voluntarily have tests done and don't have any regulation to make them comply with good standards for hygiene or ingredients?




...

"... there is no regulation of production..."

To clarify, ... as far as I know there are no regulations covering production of eliquid anywhere, just voluntary good practice checks and balances. Hardware is probably covered by guidelines for electrical and other appliances but not specific standards (for example relating to composition of coil wicks, etc)...

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-valid-vaping-health-claims-7.html#post192265

If it was just a matter of inhaling propylene glycol and nicotine vapour then there would be a lot less controvacy I'm sure.

 

[Oldnamenomore]

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-valid-vaping-health-claims-7.html#post192265

If it was just a matter of inhaling propylene glycol and nicotine vapour then there would be a lot less controvacy I'm sure.

I know there are reasons to be worried but there is info about there about inhaling the main ingredient pg and it is considered safe. So stating that the likely hood of e-cigs being safer then analogs isn't based off pure opinion.

 

[Nuck]

Intellicig recently has the vapor tested at a UK university. The phase changes were clean and there was nothing else created during the shifts.

It's pretty damn safe. It borders on the ridiculous that regular people on the forum are expected to preface every opinion with 'we don't know for sure' when it's so patently obvious that this is infinitely safer than cigarette smoke.

 

[Kate]

Pg is about the only ingredient we know anything about Marc and the studies do suggest that it's safe.

How do you weigh up all the other concerns mentioned?

 

[Hangar]

wow, great post Kate...thanks for putting it all together like that in 1 posting...maybe you could make up a sticky for this sort of info?

ive been wondering myself about the cart fillings and plastics...

...what would be nice is if there was 1 single website we could make up strictly for listing all health related concerns like this and which ones might be undergoing actual testing or not, or if theres any new related articles, etc. This would make it alot easier for new folks (or anybody really) to find all the important info in one place.

 

[Kate]

Getting objective health information about vaping is like pulling teeth. Wading through the opinions, the pros and antis just takes forever.

That's the best I've been able to come up with so far. Some of those concerns are probably negligible but as far as I know there are no studies yet even on the plausible ones.

 

[Oldnamenomore]

the flavors and the atomizer are prob my biggest concerns. Batteries, paint (since its external) don't concern me in the slightest. It's not hard for something to be safer then a cigarette.

 

[Kate]

... It's not hard for something to be safer then a cigarette.

Some people are betting very high stakes on vaping based on that idea - lives and reputations. The odds look good for vaping but the race still has to be run.

 

[Nuck]

The race was over before it began. Just waiting for the results to be posted.

The 400,000 people that will die this year in North America from smoking would probably agree.

 

[Kate]

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Hangar]

lets just hope its not a photo finish

 

[Mohave]

...<SNIP>...

There are basically two competing ideologies regarding new products risks and burden of proof.

One ideology is that products should remain on the market until/unless the product is proven to be harmful. The other idealogy is that no product (especially drugs) should be allowed on the market until/unless the manufacturer first spends lots of money prooving that the product is safe.

Harm reduction (i.e. risk reduction) is a continuum, as nothing is absolutely safe.

On a scale of mortality risk from 1 to 100 (on which NRT products are a 1 and cigarettes are a 100), smokeless tobacco products and e-cigarettes are between 1 and 2.

Since 2 is far closer to 1 than it is to 100, the e-cigarette and all other smokefree tobacco/nicotine products should be considered in the same product category as NRT, instead of the category with cigarettes.

But harm reduction opponents (in their minds) automatically catagorize anything above a 1 on this scale (i.e. even a 1.001) as an unsafe, addictive, deadly and evil tobacco product that should be eliminated from society (unless/until it is proven safe and effective as a smoking cessation aid, and even then it should only be used temporarily).

...<SNIP>...

Thank you very much, Bill, for providing this clear, concise, and useful precis of this. And for sticking with your work on it even at times it must seem personally aggravating.

 

[fenez]

As always Kate is the voice of reason she is so damn good to have around.