That is odd, since most of the people on ECF with backgrounds in chemistry seem to suspect that it will be the flavoring components, not the pg or vg, that at present bear further examination.
The flavoring would have been my first guess too, as to potential problems in the future.
And I'm sure that not every possible flavor was tested in the analyses that Dr. Burstyn studied; there may well be some combination of flavors out there that forms a worrying amount of Bad Stuff to Inhale™ when vaporized; I certainly don't claim to have an exhaustive knowledge of all things flavoring.
I imagine, though, that Phillips' point in the paragraph I quoted is that, based purely on an analysis of the
compounds detected in the vapor (including anything that arises from the vaporization of flavorings, if any are present), the
amounts of
known toxins or known potential toxins aren't high enough for concern. The amount of PG/VG is vastly higher, orders of magnitude higher, and so it's worth mentioning that that level of unprecedented exposure, among millions of people and over a long period of time, might yield unforeseen results. Probably not horrific results, but the matter's worth keeping an eye on.
Phillips is an epidemiologist, so he's a large-scale and long-view kinda guy. I highly doubt he'd rule out the possibility that this-or-that flavor combination might prove unhealthy, but his argument really isn't intended to encompass every possible vapor combination (or every battery's safety, for that matter). He's concerned with the risk factors
inherent to vaping. And he seems to think that vaping's
far less inherently risky than, say,
riding a bike to work.
Take that for what you will. Personally, I think it's silly to require iron-clad proof that an activity is safe when there's evidence to suggest that there's only trivial risk involved with that activity. When someone (anyone) refers to proof that vaping is safe, what they really mean in this context is proof that vaping ISN'T UNsafe (or worse, proof that vaping
can never be unsafe), which is problematic because it leads us down the proverbial prove-a-negative rabbit hole. For the foreseeable future, someone will
always be able to say that we haven't sufficiently proved the universal
absence of
unsafety associated with vaping.
And because vaping is an activity that resembles smoking, even if it carried zero risk there would still be people who irrationally disapprove of it. This issue is more about skewed morality than it is about health.
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