valid argument for e-juice safeness?

[coffayandtea]

First off i would like to clarify that I am a 3ml a day vaper and I trust that it is relatively safe.

A few days ago I heard one of those generic arguments that said we dont know how the ejuice might affect you since its basically a new thing.

However, ejuice needs to steep right? and isnt steeping merely prolonged diffusion?
If that is so, ejuice must be a mixture, not a compound and dont mixtures retain their chemical properties?

A friend argued that my argument is invalid because of the heating done by the coils in order to vaporize the ejuice might cause them to react in a peculiar way which we do not yet have data on.

This doesnt sound quite right to me but I only took an introductory class to chemistry so I cant claim to be an expert.

 

[Mad Scientist]

I think PG is very well understood, VG about as much, nicotine has been studied ad nauseum. The only wildcard left is the flavorings.

Steeping also includes evaporation of any volatiles and oxydation of anything readily reactive to oxygen. Oxydation doesn't necessarily mean anything becomes harmful, but it's happening of course.

We know that smoking is pretty much deadly over about 20 years of doing it -- about a 20 year lag from starting smoking to spike in cancer rate. It is true that we don't have 20 years of data from ecig and thus can't really "prove" much, but we also can't find anything in it that is particularly harmful. In terms of a harm reduction strategy, the odds strongly favor ecig over smoking.

 

[coffayandtea]

why is flavorings such a wild card? havent we been baking/cooking with them for a while? or does it come back to not knowing how the flavors react to being heated very quickly

 

[Susan W.]

Flavorings in foods isn't the same as vaping flavorings. There's still not a lot of data on this. And it's prolonged vaping, not just a whiff here and there.

 

[stevegmu]

why is flavorings such a wild card? havent we been baking/cooking with them for a while? or does it come back to not knowing how the flavors react to being heated very quickly

There's quite a difference between eating something and vaporizing it and inhaling it into the lungs.

 

[Fizzpop]

"Safe" is a tricky word. The problem is nothing is totally safe. The best we can do is to say that something appears to be not dangerous. I would argue the science tells us vaping is much less dangerous than smoking.

 

[BlueMoods]

I'm not worried, if inhaling flavoring was that harmful, we'd have heard about it from anyone that has worked in the manufacturing of flavorings - trust me, even going to a manufacturing facility to pick up a truck load of the stuff is more than a snoot full of who knows what combination of flavorings.

 

[drsocal]

Isn't the whole point really that ecigs are "safer" than traditional cigs...

 

[Mad Scientist]

Well I think the whole argument centers around anecdotally safe versus proven safe. And even before that we have to decide what "safe" means. Looking at the available data with a bit of common sense tells us anecdotally that ecigs are much, much less harmful than smoking a cigarette. That's good enough for me.

Unfortunately, arguments like the OP's friend are what regulators want to seize on. We legitimately don't have longitudinal data and their definition of "safe" is no adverse side effects whatsoever. While the "ban unless 'safe'" approach might seem appealing to the ANTZ, common things, like, say, eggs, would not meet that standard. We can indeed "prove" that it is not "safe" to eat a lot of eggs every day. Should eggs be regulated or banned lol?

 

[EddardinWinter]

Vaping can be reasonably concluded to be a legitimate THR activity. How much harm reduction? I think at least 90% harm reduction. This cannot be 'proven' for a generation, most likely, perhaps longer. So for the time being you can reasonably conclude it is safer due to the absence of tar, carbon monoxide, and the other reasonably well-proven hazards that exist in combustive tobacco smoke.