Stealth vaping, condensate, and vapor-born payloads

[MikeWhy]

So, you vape a lung full and hold it in till your exhale is clear. What happened to all the nicotine you would otherwise have shared with your surroundings? It seems pretty obvious that it's all in your lungs. Until it enters your bloodstream that is.

LD50 of nicotine is generally given as 30 to 60 mg for an average size adult. She metabolizes it at a rate giving a 2 hour half-life. vaping and fully absorbing 3 ml of 24 mg juice in 2 hours, admittedly a mean feat of sorts for me, leaves how many mg of nicotine in her system? What maximum dose did she experience in this puff-athon?

 

[MikeWhy]

Please follow up with word problems involving quadratics, polynomials, or exponentials. Thanks.

 

[Laythor]

the premise that because the exhale looks "clear" that it is clear is flawed.

 

[Whosback]

So's your dad! and welcome to the ECF

 

[Bill's Magic Vapor]

Not sure what you're after here exactly. Most of the nicotine is absorbed in vaping through the tissues of the mouth, nasal passages and throat, not the lungs. The nicotine molecule in vaping is too large to absorb effectively in the lungs, that's why cigarettes use combustion to make that happen. Of course, combustion takes the other 699 chemicals and turns them into about 4,000 other compounds. In vaping we absorb most of the nicotine, along with the PG and VG and flavoring.

The exact absorption rates of nicotine via vaping is not known exactly. Some of the best estimates are about a 50% absorption rate. However, the mechanism of action is closer to the patch or gum versus combustion via the lungs. What this means is that instead of nicotine hitting the brain in 5 seconds in smoking, it takes closer to 30 seconds in vaping. For this reason, vaping is far less addictive, not to mention that more than 100 of the additives in smoking is to increase the uptake of nicotine to the brain, making smoking far more addictive. The patch, for example, is not even considered addictive by most medical professionals.

So, based on the known vaping research, your question is not answerable with precision at this time. Please join CASAA. They are working on studies to help answer questions like this. What we know at this point is that vaping is far less harmful than smoking. The general consensus is two magnitudes less harmful, or more. That's 100 times less harmful for vaping over smoking. Hope this helps. There are tons of charts on the forum that analyze the exhaled vapor and its contents. Also, many threads on this subject as well. I found this real quick:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...ette-vs-e-cigarette-nicotine-equivalency.html

Good luck in your research. Best to you!

 

[Rickajho]

I'm not sure if you want a serious answer on not.

First off, the molecules you are dealing with in a vapor are larger than in smoke. Consequently with vaping the nicotine isn't absorbed in the lungs - it's absorbed transmucosally in the mouth and nasal passages. (Same as with Nic-O-Gum and the Nicotrol inhaler.) After that, you only absorb a relative percent of the nicotine that's actually in the liquids - anywhere between only 1/4 to 1/3 of the stated milligrams per milliliter. And since there seems to be a wide variation in the absorption rate between vapers the only way to really know what your nicotine intake actually is is to get lab testing performed. My MD won't do it. Even with me and my crazy insane 24 mg liquids, vaping 3 to 5 ml's a day, he doesn't consider the amount of nicotine I'm getting from vaping to be medically relevant.

We need more testing. In the mean time head to casaa.org and pore over what you find there. You will be interested in the most recent drexel study (link at casaa site) that has info about the contents of exhaled vapor. The study comes to the conclusion that there is no significant amount of nicotine - or much of anything else - in expelled vapor. To put it bluntly: "the dangers of second hand vape" is a myth.

 

[MikeWhy]

Hi Bill, Rick. Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I will take a look at casaa for more info. But I do have some reservations about what you both wrote. They are so similar in tone and content that it looks at first like you're both cribbing from the same verse book. Or, it could be that I just haven't been thinking about this nearly as long as you have. Something like "of course the sky is blue and water is wet". How many ways are there to express that thought?

Again, thanks for the feedback and reference.

 

[aokay9]

I'm always curious as to how much is still in the visible vapor I exhale.

If I'm smoking in the car with the windows up, for example, would my passengers absorb/inhale any nicotine????

 

[MikeWhy]

the premise that because the exhale looks "clear" that it is clear is flawed.

Hi Laythor. True enough. Along with the onions from lunch and a bit of last night's steak, my breath carries gosh knows what else.

 

[Rickajho]

Hey Mike

It's not so much a matter of thinking about it, it's more a matter of what we do know. Some things like the matter of molecular size, method of absorption, rate of absorption and percent of absorption aren't going to change no matter how many studies are done. It would be great if we had more research studies but so far what info is out there is fairly consistent. Thus it sounding like me and Bill are reading from the same crib notes. What you do read you have to parse with a critical eye as well. If one more place references that extremely flawed 2009 FDA report - on like a sampling of less than 30 e-cigarettes cartridges - I'll be running out of wall space to bang my head against. The ANTZ cite that report again and again, citing there was A BAD THING!!! found in one of those cartridges. And then skip right over the fact that the amount of said thing found in the cartridge was both negligible and irrelevant.

 

[Rickajho]

I'm always curious as to how much is still in the visible vapor I exhale.

If I'm smoking in the car with the windows up, for example, would my passengers absorb/inhale any nicotine????

Ummm... that would be a no. Go read the Drexel study at CASAA for info about that. There is no real amount of nicotine in the exhaled vapor. And keep in mind the danger in second hand anything isn't about the nicotine - it's about all the crap in cigarette smoke.

 

[Bill's Magic Vapor]

Hi Bill, Rick. Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I will take a look at casaa for more info. But I do have some reservations about what you both wrote. They are so similar in tone and content that it looks at first like you're both cribbing from the same verse book. Or, it could be that I just haven't been thinking about this nearly as long as you have. Something like "of course the sky is blue and water is wet". How many ways are there to express that thought?

Again, thanks for the feedback and reference.

I'm a professional medical researcher for a well-known institute. I have been thinking about these questions for the better part of 40 years, and about vaping since 2009. Rick and I are friends, but our journeys are different. I suppose our answers are similar because they are fairly accurate. We don't check with one another before releasing our posts, btw, lol. Good one! Vaping is not harmless. Then again, nothing is harmless. Is it safer than smoking? I think it is, and I think that is indisputable. Generally, nicotine is considered no more harmful than coffee. No one has ever died from vaping. Smoking is a killer, and lung cancer accounts for 30% of all cancers. If the choice is between smoking and vaping, choose vaping. If between vaping and not vaping, choose not vaping. Vaping is only 10 years old, so obviously the long term effects of vaping cannot be known. Also, while we know a lot about ingestion of PG, VG, food flavorings and nicotine, we know very little about vaping these ingredients. In thinking about them, there is unlikely to be any serious differences, and vaping theoretically should be relatively harmless, but that question cannot be answered accurately or with precision at this time. Good luck to you!