I can only offer my own anecdotal evidence, but switching to pure cotton wicks has definitely been a big plus for me. Aside from the performance benefits, I no longer get the scratchy throat that I used to get from silica wicks, nor do I get winded in the evenings after a day of vaping.
As for 'torching' I don't torch anything. Torching may help with some materials yet it may damage some other. The cotton ball wicks obviously don't require this, and I don't pre-torch my resistance wire. I do, however dry fire my coil red hot several times before finally adding the wick.
As of now there's no hard proof (statistics) of the long-term effects of vaping, so we're down to common sense and personal opinions...
The most common wick materials - silica, cotton, hemp, ss mesh - are generally considered 'safe enough' to vape on, but reality is we don't know. Not yet, at least.
So the bottom line is: do your own tests. Try at least some silica and some cotton, and see how they work for you (especially if you have some health condition)
Silica definitely sheds small shards, and sometimes they do get ejected from the atomizer into the user's mouth and throat. Nobody seems to sure if any make it into the lungs, or if the particles are small enough to do serious damage. Larger shards would likely just be ejected from the lungs through their normal function.
Several organic fibers have been tried, such as cotton, viscose bamboo (rayon), and hemp. Those all are basically cellulose fibers, and wick very well, but cannot be 'dry burned'. That's not much of a problem, since it is cheap and easy to just replace the wick with those materials.
Some care should be used to get clean, pure forms of those. This is not easy, as there is no requirement for them to report insecticides and processing chemicals to the consumer, so many people boil these materials a few times to hopefully remove any of those chemicals. Many seem to tout CVS sterile cotton balls as a good choice.
Stainless steel mesh and cable has been used by many, and torching it was a method to hopefully remove oils and other impurities, as well as oxidizing it to form a non-electrically-conductive layer on it so it didn't short the coil. There have been some concerns raised over that, though:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...08-stainless-steel-mesh-oxide-discussion.html
Of course since vaping has not been around all that long, we cannot say what long term effect of any wicks/coils really are. I share the silica/cotton concern that you have, but I still use both because I have nothing better at the moment. I do think that if done properly Stainless Steel rope could be the best long term solution since once it is cleaned to remove any oils and manufacturing dust it should never have any particles that come off into the lungs the way ANY organic wick could.
RHP
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