Vaping = Cancerous? Is it true?

[dyames000]

My co-worker told me that vaping is cancerous. I replied, if it is then none there will be no digital vapes and such and selling juice would be illegal then. However it still bothers me. I cant seem to find any decent answer to this question. Is vaping also bad for your health? Even if I am using Zero nic's?

I need an answer badly. If this is true then I have to switch back to analog immediately.

Thank you for taking the time to read and answer this question.

 

[rolygate]

Nope.

Dr Laugesen says, "It is impossible for an e-cigarette to cause lung cancer" - and it is even less likely that any other kind can be caused. There is a very low level of carcinogens in e-liquid (about 8ng/mg) which come across with the nicotine, but these levels are "Millions of times lower than conceivably harmful to health" according to Prof Rodu.

This level is also typically identical to that in NRTs such as nicotine skin patches, so that if ecigs can promote cancer, then so can NRTs. No one has ever suggested that there is the slightest likelihood of that occurring and there is certainly no evidence for it.

In addition, nicotine does not cause cancer or even exacerbate existing cancer in humans. There is a mountain of scientific evidence for this statement: the hundreds of clinical studies over nearly three decades carried out on Snus consumption in Sweden. The giant-scale meta-analyses of dozens of Snus studies carried out by PN Lee, and Lee & Hamling, tell us that Snus does not elevate risk for any disease (and by definition this includes any/all types of cancers).

There is also the matter of the facts as well as the clinical evidence: thirty years of epidemiology tells us that Sweden has the lowest tobacco-related death rate of any developed country in the world by a wide margin, despite having a Snus user prevalence of over 20% among the population; and that Sweden has the lowest male lung cancer and oral cancer rate in the EU. If Snus caused cancer then oral cancer would be a natural place to look for some sort of effect: there is none.

There are one or two clinical studies that show an increase in risk for pancreatic cancer, and also one or two that show the opposite: a protective effect against cancer. These results are contradicted by about 150 others which show no elevation or reduction of risk, and are therefore regarded as 'outliers'. Their methodologies have also been reported as suspect or even secret.

Some brands of Snus can supply more nicotine than some cigarettes, so that the alkaloid is certainly present in sufficient quantities to be effective. Blood plasma tests demonstrate high availability. Therefore if ad lib consumption of Snus over many decades can be shown to be without any statistically-demonstrable risk, it could be assumed with a reasonable degree of validity that nicotine is a low-risk drug without significant issues (except for those with a genetic reason to avoid it). This is the current mainstream medical opinion since even the UK's MHRA, a violently anti-vaping government agency as they work for the pharmaceutical industry, has described nicotine as "A very safe drug". Other experts describe nicotine as "relatively harmless" and so on.

Nicotine consumption probably has as much significance to health as coffee consumption (caffeine).

So as far as vaping is concerned, we know that the carcinogen level is so low as to be insignificant, and that nicotine is a safe consumer drug with no issues (except in certain circumstances for certain individuals - as is true of many materials in any case). Note also that nicotine is a normal ingredient in the diet and everyone tests positive for it, so that consuming nicotine via other channels is boosting the dietary consumption rather than consumption of something entirely alien.

There are only three circumstances in which I have any concerns about the significance of vaping to health:

1. Persons with lungs severely damaged by smoking need to exercise extreme caution. If you have emphysema or Stage 3 or 4 COPD then realistically you would be much better off with Snus. People die from these conditions and you won't live longer by continuing to inhale extraneous materials. There is probably an increase of risk for pneumonia.

2. We don't know much about the implications of inhaling food flavours over periods of decades. Some flavours will be completely innocuous (harmless), but others are known to be lethal (such as diacetyl, the synthetic butter popcorn flavour). Until we have a great deal more research on this particular issue, no one can realistically make any factual statements about the issues. That won't be the case for about 20 years.

3. The vendors of e-liquids have been notable by their unwillingness to take safety issues seriously by organising extensive retail product testing. Or, if they have done so, they haven't published the results - which is equally worrying. This means there is always going to be the potential for contaminants or incorrect flavourings to be present, since no one can prove otherwise. The best way to avoid potential problems is to pay top dollar for your e-liquid, since then there is a chance of good quality and some testing. There is no possible way that cheap e-liquid can be said to be safe, since testing is expensive, therefore a cheap e-liquid has received no testing - QED. It is probably fair to say that at least 90% of e-liquid vendors don't have a clue what is in their finished retail product. You can virtually guarantee that vendors of cheap e-liquid are selling materials with a completely unknown composition and just crossing their fingers for luck.

Prove me wrong !

 

[Kent C]

This from wikipedia: (and with that, doubt everything - read the links in the notes and then 'question everything' even then ;- ) ...determine or at least consider if, there is a political intent in the epidemiological studies done in universities with either gov't grants or grants from tobacco companies).

"Historically, nicotine has not been regarded as a carcinogen and the IARC has not evaluated nicotine in its standalone form and assigned it to an official carcinogen group. While no epidemiological evidence supports that nicotine alone acts as a carcinogen in the formation of human cancer, research over the last decade has identified nicotine's carcinogenic potential in animal models and cell culture."



From what I gather from the studies cited, this 'potential' is Nicotine acting as an agent that can either help or impede any process but only 'in conjunction with' other factors - and when it is a study on smoking, the other factors that are known carcinogens are mainly the tar that is a result of tobacco combustion - something that doesn't take place in ecigarettes. In fact, in many ejuices, there is no tobacco absolute - the extract from the tobacco plant - of course some tobacco flavored ejuices Do have tobacco absolute but still no 'tobacco combustion' that causes the tar and the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoking.

And so if you actually read the studies most of them when citing nicotine will do it in this form - nicotine/smoking - which without the explicit description of the study, means that lab rats were exposed to cigarette smoke that would among other things, contain nicotine, but again, "historically" nicotine has not been considered a carcinogen - but some of the effects of tobacco combustion, has.

Most studies have the caveat: " However, to elucidate this complex pathogenic mechanism, further study at the molecular level is warranted."

In the study (a summary of the study) that stated that, it followed with:

"In contrast, findings of clinical trials give promising results on the use of nicotine as an adjuvant therapy for UC (ulcerative colitis) . The beneficial effect of nicotine on UC seems to be mediated through multiple mechanisms. More clinical studies are needed to establish the therapeutic value of nicotine in this disease."

So they 'found' a beneficial effect of nicotine in the same study that suggested it also 'mediated' the process earlier. And what we know of nicotine as an anti-inflammatory agent - it is very likely that it did help the 'itis' part of colitis - an inflammation.

The long term effects of PG and VG inhalation, through studies going back into the 40's and beyond, of people that worked in factories that make PG and VG, have shown no detrimental effects.