Korean government attacks e-cigarettes

[rolygate]

The Korean Ministry of Health has issued a press release condemning e-cigarettes. It publishes an analysis of 121 samples of e-liquid in which it reports that the majority of samples contained highly toxic levels of pthalates, acetaldehyde, and formaldehyde - some of which it characterises as 'found in nuclear rooms' and that 'block male hormones, mimicking female hormones'.

According to this representation, e-cigarette users presumably suffer from nuclear industry diseases and, if male, become neutered. Strangely, none of the millions of e-cig users have reported this, and neither have their doctors.

I have been asked to go on Korean radio - TBS Primetime - at 7.40pm on the 21st (Friday), 10.40am UTC, to comment.

Primetime

The report in the Korea Herald:

www. koreaherald .com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120119001020

NOTE: there are two spaces in the above link that you will have to close up, in order to make it work: after the www, and before the .com. This is because we do not want to give ECF link juice to propaganda of this sort.


Docs
Korea Herald report:
www.scribd.com/doc/78816417/Korea-Herald

Korea Health Ministry report (in Korean):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/78816997/korea-pr

Google Translate will translate this for you - save the web page as HTML.
If someone can convert this to PDF and upload to Scribd, we would appreciate it - thank you (my PDF printer fails on this HTML doc).

 

[Ande]

The Korea Herald is absolutely the worst dregs of journalism that this country has to offer.

If, Roly, you come across anyone who might be receptive to a personal meeting with a vaper as clarification, I'm here and available.

Best,
Ande

 

[azzaman]

Why do they tax the .... out of e cigs products in Korea?

 

[rolygate]

I think e-cigs are taxed about 4x tobacco cigarettes, according to Valsacar (one of our ECF Mods, he is in KR). Probably because the Korea government wants to protect cigarette sales, they are closely aligned with the largest cigarette firm and used to own it.

 

[rolygate]

Ande, they might want a vaper on the radio, maybe in the days to come. Give me your email and I'll pass it on.

chris[AT]e-cigarette-forum[DOT]com

TV maybe...

 

[Ande]

To import eliquid into Korea (legally) you're looking at 600won tax (about 50cents US) per ml. ·Effectively, this doubles the price of a lot of my juice.

It's clearly a way of protecting the cigarette industry, but it's nothing unusual here. They tax the hell out of everything imported, by way of protecting local products.

I'm going to see if I can contact a Korean chemist I used to know who could investigate the nuances of this study for me.

Cause it sounds like it really stinks.

Best,
Ande

 

[azzaman]

Currently in Australia we are able to import nicotine juice but can't buy it locally. I couldn't make the switch if tobacco was a cheaper option. It is unfair that the Korean government taxes the product so much. Eventually this will happen everywhere else though. Quite sad really.

 

[Scottinboca]

This thread should be merged with the other Korea thread. 2 threads, same issue.

 

[throatkick]

This is highly unfortunate. Intellectual honesty in the dumps. If you really think about it, why would anyone put all those unnecessary chemicals in there? Then again, why are there so many chemicals in cigarettes?

 

[Cool_Breeze]

Would the Korea being spoken of be the one we in the U.S. know as South Korea?

 

[chet]

Would the Korea being spoken of be the one we in the U.S. know as South Korea?

Yes.

--------------------------------------------------------
Wow rolygate, thank you for bringing this up.
I just watched this Korean Health Ministry claims on one of Korean prime time news(9 o'clock news), and I came to this section of ECF for the first time to mention this and ask around about the possibility of the test result being true. Then I see your thread~!

Basically Korean Health Ministry ran a test of 121 juice samples from 13 different suppliers and found following:

(Carcinogens)
- ALL 121 samples contained Acetaldehyde (0.10~11.81mg/L)
- 103 samples contained Formaldehyde (news broadcast mentioned this, but I don't see this claim in newspapers)
- 4 samples also contained very little amount tobacco-specific carcinogen, Nitrosamines (44.0∼65.75㎍/L)

(Environmental Hormones)
-82 samples contained Diethyl Phthalate (0.08~2274.04mg/L)
-15 samples contained 2-ethylhexyl Phthalate (0.30∼99.49mg/L)

They did not mention what vendors or country these samples were from, but the article/news mentions that eliquids in Korea are imported from China. And I know Dekang is the most popular eliquid in Korea, with many franchise stores all over the country. So I can only guess the eliquid samples were Chinese made unless alot of them were from black-market juices.

At one point in the on-air news they mention that a person vaping 36mg strengh eliquid can intake an amount of nicotine equial to over 700 cigarettes. I just had to laugh at this point. They clearly don't know what they're talking about.

Now, I do know for fact that current mainstream media is quite corrupt in Korea, but I don't have much knowledge about the Korean Health Ministry. This isn't the first time Korean news braodcasts attacking ecig, but this particular one is very strong accusation against ecig industry.

What I want to know is, what's the possibility that these chemicals could've gotten into those ejuices? I know nothing about chemicals. Can some bad quality bottles, contaminated PG/VG/Nic/Flavoring etc yield this shocking test result somehow?

 

[Spartan8029]

It's hilarious that they would take that stance when some of the stuff that they do regarding medical procedures are outright ridiculous. I know a girl that was 5'6", 105lbs who went and got a weight loss injection. I thought she was crazy for wanting to get it done but then I realized Korea was crazy for giving it to her, legally.

 

[rolygate]

Cool_Breeze -- Would the Korea being spoken of be the one we in the U.S. know as South Korea?

Yes - the R.O.K. to be correct, CB

 

[chet]

I was just reading the other thread on the same subject, and there were some notable posts:

I haven't had time to look all the stuff up, but I focused on acetaldehyde. This report says: "Also, all liquid cartridges were found with acetaldehyde in a density of up to 11.91 mg/l, which could be critically unhealthy when inhaled."

So, 11.92 mg/L would be 11.91 (mg / L) = 0.01191 mg/ml

A report I found on acetaldehyde says this: "It has also been reported that acetaldehyde is released from cigarette smoke at a rate of 0.87-1.37 mg/cigarette (Hoffman et al., 1975).

All right, 0.01191 mg/ml acetaldehyde in e-cig juice, versus about 1 mg/ml in the smoke from one cigarette, that's a 100 fold difference. That's just one reference I found, and I'd have to look some more to see if that's accurate.

So is this a case similar to what we saw with the FDA report, where things are presented without any frame of reference? The article about the Korean report also says small amounts off nitrosamines were found, which we already knew from various reports, and we already know that the small amounts found are nothing compared to the amounts in cigarettes, and are likely below any amount that would produce a health effect.

I haven't really looked too much into the diethyl phthalate and diethylhexyl phthalate. I did find that diethyl phthalate is commonly used in (as?) a plasticizer, so it could very well be coming from the hardware.

0.08-2,274.04 mg/L for diethyl phthalate is a pretty big range (0.00008 mg/ml - 2.27404 mg/ml). How many of those that came up positive for this were at the low end of the range and how many at the high end? The low end of the range is probably pretty low to see any health effect, but I'm just guessing.

Okay, I'm not trying to bash, but trying to get an idea of just how big (or small) these numbers are.

ETA: The fact that they reported their numbers in mg/L is kind of sneaky, IMO, and makes the numbers appear bigger than they actually are.

Confirmed the earlier post that acetaldehyde in e-cigs occurs at a rate of 1% of regular cigarettes. (From international programme on chemical safety, Environmental Health Criteria 167, Acetaldehyde) Acetaldehyde (EHC 167, 1995)

 

[rolygate]

The interview on the Primetime show seems to have gone OK. Apparently the audio was acceptable, although I don't know why they use the phone and not Skype.

As regards the chemicals that the Korea Health Ministry laboratory found in the e-cig refills, nobody else has found those chemicals. We assume they tested Dekang as it's the most widely available, and therefore the most tested by government and other labs. Even the FDA could not find those chemicals, so at this stage we are assuming the Korea lab is incompetent.

The reason I say that is from advice I have received from chemists in the last few hours. Here is a list of the issues:

Pthalates
These are plasticizers, chemicals used to make plastic containers flexible.
They are not used in the manufacture of e-liquids.
They can be leached out of non food-grade containers by solvents.
99% of e-liquids that have been tested show that food-grade plastic bottles are used; only one test is known where a small amount of a pthalate was found, and the manufacturer changed to food-grade plastic as a result.
We think that the Korea lab used plastic lab ware, not glass, for their solvents, or for the e-liquid mixed with solvents for testing (as is standard practice).
They should have used glass.

Acetaldehyde, aka ethanal
This is a reaction compound formed by a solvent and other materials.
It is not used in the production of e-liquid.
One solvent that may be used for GC-MS or other testing is ethanol. Look at the alternative chemical name for acetaldehyde, above.

Formaldehyde, aka methanal
This is a reaction compound formed by a solvent and other materials.
It is not used in the production of e-liquid.
One solvent that may be used for GC-MS or other testing is methanol. Look at the alternative chemical name for formaldehyde, above.


I have to state clearly here that I am certainly not a chemist. Even a chemist could not say how these results were obtained, without full details of all the procedures, equipment, and materials. But it needs to be appreciated that no other lab in the world has found these chemicals - even the FDA. They spent a great deal of money looking for things like this.

Draw your own conclusions.


Note
This is not the first time we have seen an incompetent laboratory used by a government agency. A similar thing happened in the UK, at the LACORS agency, who used to be in control of the Trading Standards inspectors.

They issued a report stating that e-cig refills were dangerously toxic and could kill people. When the lab report was obtained, it showed a factor-10 error in their calculations - they had overestimated the nicotine strength by ten times. When this was pointed out, they withdrew their published materials. This was one of the factors that led to the formation of the UK trade association, ECITA.

Within a year the LACORS agency had been disbanded and abolished. Incompetence can be fatal.

 

[rolygate]

I didn't have time to address the carcinogens issue on the radio show, but we are all aware that the levels in e-cig refills are the same as or lower than those in NRTs such as skin patches. These are considered safe.

We also know that Snus has much higher levels than this (though a fraction of the amount in cigarette smoke), but a Snus user has no elevated risk for any kind of cancer, as proven by more than 150 clinical trials and surveys.

 

[chet]

On the Korean news they mentioned they tested cartridges, and I wondered why they said 'cartdridges' instead of 'eksang(Korean name for eliquid)' which is widely used and also mentioned in other parts of the same report. Now I'm thinking maybe they in fact did test the eliquids in prefilled cartridges, and we all know those don't taste right. Maybe those were where Pthalates came from?

 

[rolygate]

It seems that they probably used solvents such as ethanol to extract the liquid from the cartridges, and for dilution of the materials for GC-MS testing. This is standard practice.

What then happened is that they used plastic containers to hold the solvent-diluted materials for testing, instead of glass. The plasticizers (pthalates) leached out of the lab containers.

Dekang and virtually everyone else use food-grade plastic bottles, with none of these plasticizers in, because the manufacturers know about this issue. Maybe you remember the problems with clingfilm, where it had to be removed from the market or another type used for microwave cooking, because of exactly the same issue.

 

[Spazmelda]

This is what I posted in the other thread:

I haven't had time to look all the stuff up, but I focused on acetaldehyde. This report says: "Also, all liquid cartridges were found with acetaldehyde in a density of up to 11.91 mg/l, which could be critically unhealthy when inhaled."

So, 11.92 mg/L would be 11.91 (mg / L) = 0.01191 mg/ml

A report I found on acetaldehyde says this: "It has also been reported that acetaldehyde is released from cigarette smoke at a rate of 0.87-1.37 mg/cigarette (Hoffman et al., 1975).

All right, 0.01191 mg/ml acetaldehyde in e-cig juice, versus about 1 mg/ml in the smoke from one cigarette, that's a 100 fold difference. That's just one reference I found, and I'd have to look some more to see if that's accurate.

So is this a case similar to what we saw with the FDA report, where things are presented without any frame of reference? The article about the Korean report also says small amounts off nitrosamines were found, which we already knew from various reports, and we already know that the small amounts found are nothing compared to the amounts in cigarettes, and are likely below any amount that would produce a health effect.

I haven't really looked too much into the diethyl phthalate and diethylhexyl phthalate. I did find that diethyl phthalate is commonly used in (as?) a plasticizer, so it could very well be coming from the hardware.

0.08-2,274.04 mg/L for diethyl phthalate is a pretty big range (0.00008 mg/ml - 2.27404 mg/ml). How many of those that came up positive for this were at the low end of the range and how many at the high end? The low end of the range is probably pretty low to see any health effect, but I'm just guessing.

Okay, I'm not trying to bash, but trying to get an idea of just how big (or small) these numbers are.

ETA: The fact that they reported their numbers in mg/L is kind of sneaky, IMO, and makes the numbers appear bigger than they actually are.

 

[Jim Bob]

Clearly this is propaganda as a means to an end. When one makes statements of opinions masked as "facts" without saying exactly which eliquids were tested it's all too obvious they don't want others testing the same and finding out the real truth. I won't go so far to say that vaping is "safe" but this "study" has too many flaws to be taken seriously (but BT and BP will use it no doubt)

I have said it before "safe" or not I smoked for over 3 decades , we know that isn't safe, too much clear evidence from my own body that vaping IS better/safer than smoking was- that is good enough for ME

YMMV