Are we talking single digits, i.e. less than 10?
Again, PROBABLY ok. We do not know if inhaling
ANY DA or AP is safe, of course. And there are many variables in addition to liquid concentrations. If you are vaping 40 mL a day at 100W, then 10 ug/mL will be a
much bigger risk than someone puffing on a Joye 510. We also do not know if disease from DA or AP is dependent on the person's physiology/genetics, but we do think that it is incremental, cumulative, and irreversable. So when I say probably ok, I mean just that:
probably, but it is still largely unknown and I would not say it is zero risk. NIOSH says work environment air concentrations when translated to normal breathing would be about 66 ug/day allowable for DA. But allowable does not mean disease-free, it means about 1 in 1000 workers will get sick from a lung-related disease. If 1 in 1000 vapers get sick,
we are screwed. The liquid concentrations we gave assumed 3 mL a day of liquid consumed, not some magic concentration cutoff, which many insist on hanging on to. But we have to start somewhere, and we can't monitor total ug/day consumed by vapers. But we can test in terms of concentration in e-liquids, given some assumed consumption rate.
And again, I emphasize that DA or AP are simply compounds added to give a type of taste experience. They are essentially purely
luxury compounds. They do not have anything to do with nicotine absorption. You do not need these compounds to be able to vape. And vaping is not a work environment where their presence is required to do a job. They just taste good. This is why toxicologists we have contacted about this will not support
any DA or AP in an e-liquid, as in zero, ziltch, nada. In so many words, their message has been: "You're kidding, right? These are flavor compounds for a
recreational consumer product. There is zero need to have these known inhalation toxins in an e-liquid."
But testing for them in e-liquids is difficult, as I have said. There are significant precision and accuracy challenges when they are in a complex flavor matrix. I am working with a lab right now to get another analytical method validated and online for testing. It is not straight forward. And completely getting rid of them in e-liquids at this point is also difficult, time consuming and very expensive, especially if your custardy flavors have been big sellers, as they generally are.
So when I say < 10 ppm in a liquid is PROBABLY ok, I mean PROBABLY, with many caveats. I want to see consumers having a
verifiable choice as to whether or not they are present, as in lab test results with validated methods of detection posted, so consumers KNOW whether or not they are present and in what concentrations. We were fed a falsehood before, either knowingly or unknowingly by sellers (I want to believe unknowingly), and consumers essentially had their choice that they were
making consciously taken away from them without them knowing. Given the potential for serious injury, that is wrong and needs to be fixed. If regulators ban them from e-liquids (possible), or vendors choose out of concern for customers or fear of litigation to remove them completely from their product line, then that is their choice.
