Now that we have reached a consensus on who is behind the "95% safer", let's start a new topic about who is before it.
See my post #35 on page two.
Who is behind the "95% Safer"..?
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See my post #35 on page two.
I already did see it at the time when you wrote it. I actually even wrote a reply to you about it, see my post #36 directly below it.
Sorry, should have noticed that it was you when I went to retrieve the post number. You pointed out that it was only one study which is true. Not only did it apparently (still can not find it!) predate the 95% safer misquote. The math is the same if you round down, 98% minus the 3% margin of error is exactly 95%.
Perhaps it is where PHE and / or RCoP got the "unlikely to be more than 5% as dangerous" from? Which immediately got flipped back around to 95% safer.
Personally like the sound of 98% safer. People vaping diacetyl on a high watt mec mode with cheap unwrapped batteries probably are only 95% safer. Someone with a mental illness which responds well to nicotine might very well be 101% better off than not vaping. The rest of us could, perhaps should be using the 98% safer instead of 95%.
The thing is putting a "safety percentage value" on vaping vs smoking doesnt make sense at all if you think even a little about it. Its basicly just saying "vaping is ALOT safer then smoking" in a way for average Joe to understand.
95% of WHAT? Deaths? Cancer patients? All illnesses combined? Numeric values of dangerous chemicals present in smoke vs vapor? If so; which ones of the ~3000 present in cigarette smoke are we talking about?
95% of WHAT? Deaths? Cancer patients? All illnesses combined? Numeric values of dangerous chemicals present in smoke vs vapor? If so; which ones of the ~3000 present in cigarette smoke are we talking about?
I think it's 95% of time. Speaking specifically of the times between 1 and 4 pm during the day and 2 to 5 am night. It's reported that if you live in Alaska you're screwed most of the year. Luckily I know all about Alaska and know this to be true, because I've watched the show Deadliest Catch.
Maybe that's all they were trying to do, clear the air a bit for the rest of us. They put out that paper at a time when there was a mountain of unreliable or totally bogus information out there, agendas being pushed, and very little solid ground to stand on. So they took a best guess based on the available actual research and summarized it in a digestible form.
I don't think it was actually presented as a rigorous scientific paper. Most of us aren't scientists anyway. Sure it's possible to deconstruct it and point out how it failed to meet the standards of something it didn't ever claim to be anyway. But it works as a moment of sanity in a sea of craziness. I'm happy that PHE did what they did.
Formaldehyde is the one I would worry most about, but that generally isn't an issue until you start pushing the envelope on power, according to those who've tested the vapor. It's why I stay around 3.5v to 4v. Of course it's HEAT that creates Formaldehyde in the vapor. Lowering the coil resistance is akin to raising the voltage at the coil in terms of heat since Power = Voltage ^2 / Resistance.
If you read the article at the link it states that the power levels necessary to create Formaldehyde were high enough to make the vapor hot and burned, so most people would turn down the power at that point and return to a safer range. High air flow atomizers used in DTL mode might have air flow at a high enough level to cool the vape below the levels needed to create a formaldehyde issue.
The Truth Behind the Formaldehyde Scare - Mt Baker Vapor
If you read the article at the link it states that the power levels necessary to create Formaldehyde were high enough to make the vapor hot and burned, so most people would turn down the power at that point and return to a safer range. High air flow atomizers used in DTL mode might have air flow at a high enough level to cool the vape below the levels needed to create a formaldehyde issue.
The Truth Behind the Formaldehyde Scare - Mt Baker Vapor
Mike Petro's experiments suggested that the relationship between power and temperature wasn't straightforward or intuitive. For example some low power, high resistance setups like Pro Tanks were generating temperature well within the range where formaldehydes started to be produced, at power levels I would have expected to be safe. Power levels I had used myself without feeling like they were too hot.
Turning down the power in response to hot vapor, or using TC, are useful steps we can take. They aren't magic bullets though. There are a lot of variables in vaping systems. I suspect anyone who believes they have completely figured it out is deluding themselves. Mike was quite clear that he had only scratched the surface.
Airflow is key to balancing power with a desirable temperature range. As I said uptopic most people would gag and spit at levels high enough to produce dangerous vapor ranges. If you vape at 420F using TC mode I wouldn't think there's an issue. I mostly vape in power mode at low wattage levels, but I sometimes turn on TC mode just to try it. I always go back to power mode because I don't really care for TC mode.
I think there's a temperature range that people find comfortable. Much higher than the sweet spot is going to be something that most don't care for. I've cranked my vape near 500F before and it was terrible. When I do use TC mode I'm at 400F to 420F. Of course, how do we know that TC mode is highly accurate? I think it's probably close, but the telltale in the vape is good flavor vs hot and burnt tasting vapor. Most of us want good flavor.
Wattage choice is dependent on air flow. Air flow lowers the temperature of the coil. DTL vapers who approach high wattages are using free air flow to balance the temperature of the coil to keep the vapor temperature in a range that produces good flavor. MTL vapers just turn down the wattage to find the vape quality they like.
Rambling thoughts, but that's my take on the whole formaldehyde question. If your vapor is tasty and smooth you probably aren't creating dangerous chemicals in your vapor. Without an appropriate analyzer it's only a guess, but I don't worry about formaldehyde in my 10W MTL vape.
I think there's a temperature range that people find comfortable. Much higher than the sweet spot is going to be something that most don't care for. I've cranked my vape near 500F before and it was terrible. When I do use TC mode I'm at 400F to 420F. Of course, how do we know that TC mode is highly accurate? I think it's probably close, but the telltale in the vape is good flavor vs hot and burnt tasting vapor. Most of us want good flavor.
Wattage choice is dependent on air flow. Air flow lowers the temperature of the coil. DTL vapers who approach high wattages are using free air flow to balance the temperature of the coil to keep the vapor temperature in a range that produces good flavor. MTL vapers just turn down the wattage to find the vape quality they like.
Rambling thoughts, but that's my take on the whole formaldehyde question. If your vapor is tasty and smooth you probably aren't creating dangerous chemicals in your vapor. Without an appropriate analyzer it's only a guess, but I don't worry about formaldehyde in my 10W MTL vape.
A couple of points on Mike's testing back then. It all began after the article by Wang regarding temperature independent of the vape gear as responsible for VOC production. The first tests Mike did was to validate that the temps entered in TC mode were truly reflective of the mod setting by measuring the temp of the coil with a thermocouple. Testing DNA boards it was +/-10F. So TC (with the tested board) appeared to be accurate.
He then tested a variety of tsnk/coil setups sent to him of commonly used stuff from members. What was interesting was the low air flow mtl stuff at wattage usually considered average for the setup (I can't give specific settings as this was a while ago and I'm commuting so hard to look up exact while typing while bouncing around in the subway) maybe 10-12W with a 1.8 ohm Nauti coil, pretty representative of general mtl at that time (same was on other mtlish stuff but I'd read the original stuff for accuracy) also held that one, you could exceed 500F after 3 draws and two, the taste of the vape (remember this was real tank real life stuff with draws taken while a thermocouple was in place) was NOT a good predictor of the actual temps. IIRC. The Nauti tank got as high as 535F on a third draw before it started to taste a bit off. Not burned, not dry hit, just nit a great taste. So taste alone was no guideline on those tests to temps achieved.
And yes, a Smok Baby Beast with a 0.4 ohm Q2 coil at wattage around 40-45W, about average normal use for that coil, was cooler even with the higher wattage, so airflow was a big deal. So were a bunch of other variables and I believe the flowchart fit that is in his blog as well.
The last testing he did was to try and perform a very rough and dirty approximstion of Wang's results in tanks, not a temperature reactor. While the results and charts he obtained were not nearly as accurate as ND consistent as what Wang could do in their lab with superior testing equipment. his results demonstrated the same trends as Wang showed but on real live vape tanks. His graph is more for comparison to help validate Wang's work rather than establish formaldehyde production with precision to be interpreted as a standalone finding. It just was an attempt to see if those temperature correlations seemed to occur in real life vape use settings instead, which they appeared to go.
So wattage and coil resistance alonevdid not correlate to "safe" temperatures for vaping, and the reliance on taste as a measure of temperature degradation appeared only after exceeding 500F, well above the more accurate 450-475F point where Wang showed VOC production took off in an exponential fashion.
A few years earlier, when a correspondence letter appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine first raising the whole formaldehyde stuff was published (it was NOT a peer reviewed full research article in the journal) Dr. F showed that reproducing the same results with the same crappy ckearo second generation vape pens where voltage alone was the variable that at the point formaldehyde was being measured the taste of the vapor at that point was that of a dry hit, which is pretty unmistakable and debunked normal usage as reaching that point. Mike's work reflected third generation contemporary tanks and took temperature as the primary variable and found, well, what I just described.
Like I said, doing this in transit is a little tough. My numbers might be a little off, it was a few years ago now. But the take home message that temp matters, that those temps can be reached without necessarily getting into dry hit territory, and mtl vs dl wasn't a good method of assigning risk are pretty well laid out.
That said, in TC I'm usually at 450F. Lower is too cool as vape for me. I may be at that inflection point, but not on the steep part of Wangs curve. We all pick our own levels of safe use fit fit us.
Oh, the other big variable were tgePG/VG ratios. The higher the VG the lower the breakdown temps. Even thinning with a little distilled water helps. For whatever reason Mike's results seemed to show 50/50 as worse than 70/30 (or 80/20 don't recall). Wangs results were more linear with lower PG consistently lowering the inflection point so high VG juices did produce more VOCs at the same temps than lower VG liquids.
Hope that summary helps. And back to the whole 95% consensus thing, I'd keep in mind that best practices in treatments of most diseases are produced by professional associations and medical societies all the time under a consensus reached by experts in the field with consideration of the basic research and clinical data published at that point in time. They are created with general standards including how reliable or likely given protocols may be considered as effective, probably effective, possibly effective, and not enough known yet. Those committee consensus statements are updated as new data becomes available sometimes every few years, sometimes in the same year if something of great importance was published. So the use of a consensus statement based on available scientific and medical research at that point in time is a well established and accepted method for the creation of the best evidence based diagnostic and treatment protocols on everything from heart disease, diabetes, hypertension to cancers of different varieties. It's a perfectly acceptable method of presenting information to the medical community and to label it as "not real science" is to basically say "I won't take a medicine or trestemt because it's a committee finding, not real science". Sorry, but in medicine, that's about the best you'll get because there are few hard and fast rules or laws of science that given individual variability in a population regarding a disease or its treatment. All that consensus states is they believe there is a significantly lower risk comparing vaping to cigarette use. That's it. It'll be revised with new numbers (probably leaving numbers out altogether due to the mess made as people manipulate it for their own agendas) as more data becomes available. The updated consensus may find results remain consistent with a significantly lower risk or maybe even just a moderate reduction in risk. We don't know what future studies will show. If we did we should he buying lottery tickets with our ability to foretell the future.
Oh, one final note. FDA approval typically hinges on the results reached by a commitie of experts in that particular field who review the evidence presented on a product by the manufacturer who then vote a consensus finding whether or not to issue formal FDA approval. They are almost never unanimous and a majority view wins the day. There are almost always 1-3 votes against a given product in a panel of 12-16 people. This isn't a unanimous verdict by jury. And the FDA is still not bound to follow the recommendation, although they usually will.
He then tested a variety of tsnk/coil setups sent to him of commonly used stuff from members. What was interesting was the low air flow mtl stuff at wattage usually considered average for the setup (I can't give specific settings as this was a while ago and I'm commuting so hard to look up exact while typing while bouncing around in the subway) maybe 10-12W with a 1.8 ohm Nauti coil, pretty representative of general mtl at that time (same was on other mtlish stuff but I'd read the original stuff for accuracy) also held that one, you could exceed 500F after 3 draws and two, the taste of the vape (remember this was real tank real life stuff with draws taken while a thermocouple was in place) was NOT a good predictor of the actual temps. IIRC. The Nauti tank got as high as 535F on a third draw before it started to taste a bit off. Not burned, not dry hit, just nit a great taste. So taste alone was no guideline on those tests to temps achieved.
And yes, a Smok Baby Beast with a 0.4 ohm Q2 coil at wattage around 40-45W, about average normal use for that coil, was cooler even with the higher wattage, so airflow was a big deal. So were a bunch of other variables and I believe the flowchart fit that is in his blog as well.
The last testing he did was to try and perform a very rough and dirty approximstion of Wang's results in tanks, not a temperature reactor. While the results and charts he obtained were not nearly as accurate as ND consistent as what Wang could do in their lab with superior testing equipment. his results demonstrated the same trends as Wang showed but on real live vape tanks. His graph is more for comparison to help validate Wang's work rather than establish formaldehyde production with precision to be interpreted as a standalone finding. It just was an attempt to see if those temperature correlations seemed to occur in real life vape use settings instead, which they appeared to go.
So wattage and coil resistance alonevdid not correlate to "safe" temperatures for vaping, and the reliance on taste as a measure of temperature degradation appeared only after exceeding 500F, well above the more accurate 450-475F point where Wang showed VOC production took off in an exponential fashion.
A few years earlier, when a correspondence letter appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine first raising the whole formaldehyde stuff was published (it was NOT a peer reviewed full research article in the journal) Dr. F showed that reproducing the same results with the same crappy ckearo second generation vape pens where voltage alone was the variable that at the point formaldehyde was being measured the taste of the vapor at that point was that of a dry hit, which is pretty unmistakable and debunked normal usage as reaching that point. Mike's work reflected third generation contemporary tanks and took temperature as the primary variable and found, well, what I just described.
Like I said, doing this in transit is a little tough. My numbers might be a little off, it was a few years ago now. But the take home message that temp matters, that those temps can be reached without necessarily getting into dry hit territory, and mtl vs dl wasn't a good method of assigning risk are pretty well laid out.
That said, in TC I'm usually at 450F. Lower is too cool as vape for me. I may be at that inflection point, but not on the steep part of Wangs curve. We all pick our own levels of safe use fit fit us.
Oh, the other big variable were tgePG/VG ratios. The higher the VG the lower the breakdown temps. Even thinning with a little distilled water helps. For whatever reason Mike's results seemed to show 50/50 as worse than 70/30 (or 80/20 don't recall). Wangs results were more linear with lower PG consistently lowering the inflection point so high VG juices did produce more VOCs at the same temps than lower VG liquids.
Hope that summary helps. And back to the whole 95% consensus thing, I'd keep in mind that best practices in treatments of most diseases are produced by professional associations and medical societies all the time under a consensus reached by experts in the field with consideration of the basic research and clinical data published at that point in time. They are created with general standards including how reliable or likely given protocols may be considered as effective, probably effective, possibly effective, and not enough known yet. Those committee consensus statements are updated as new data becomes available sometimes every few years, sometimes in the same year if something of great importance was published. So the use of a consensus statement based on available scientific and medical research at that point in time is a well established and accepted method for the creation of the best evidence based diagnostic and treatment protocols on everything from heart disease, diabetes, hypertension to cancers of different varieties. It's a perfectly acceptable method of presenting information to the medical community and to label it as "not real science" is to basically say "I won't take a medicine or trestemt because it's a committee finding, not real science". Sorry, but in medicine, that's about the best you'll get because there are few hard and fast rules or laws of science that given individual variability in a population regarding a disease or its treatment. All that consensus states is they believe there is a significantly lower risk comparing vaping to cigarette use. That's it. It'll be revised with new numbers (probably leaving numbers out altogether due to the mess made as people manipulate it for their own agendas) as more data becomes available. The updated consensus may find results remain consistent with a significantly lower risk or maybe even just a moderate reduction in risk. We don't know what future studies will show. If we did we should he buying lottery tickets with our ability to foretell the future.
Oh, one final note. FDA approval typically hinges on the results reached by a commitie of experts in that particular field who review the evidence presented on a product by the manufacturer who then vote a consensus finding whether or not to issue formal FDA approval. They are almost never unanimous and a majority view wins the day. There are almost always 1-3 votes against a given product in a panel of 12-16 people. This isn't a unanimous verdict by jury. And the FDA is still not bound to follow the recommendation, although they usually will.
Not gonna quote the whole thing, it's right there, one message up.
One important note: Even at temperatures where the onset of "burnt taste" was noticeable (at a bit over 500F), formaldehyde levels were still only a small fraction of those generally reported to be present in cigarette smoke.
So yes, there's an inflection point in the mid 400F range. Exactly where it is depends on the PG /VG / H2O mix. But no matter how you slice it, if the vape tastes OK, we're getting substantially less formaldehyde than we would from smoke, while getting practically none of the other nasty stuff (tar, carbon monoxide, etc). This further validates Dr. Farsalinos' earlier work, which indicated that to get the really high levels that were reported in the media, you have to get the coil hot enough to produce something resembling a dry puff.
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Absolutely true. It does remain lower than a cigarette until higher temperatures. But TBH, it isn't such a good thing to breathe in to begin with. If we can vape in ways still satisfying but safer, it's a reasonable strategy. But everyone has to make that decision for themselves.
Dr F's work at that time was important. But those devices and how they behave with VV really isn't relevant to the newer vape gear in use today. That's one of the problems with studies like this. Your data is out of date before you even disseminate the info as new equipment and supplies change so quickly in the marketplace. For example, what do mesh coils do? How do they behave and what kind of temps are generated during use in wattage mode? We don't know but they're taking over the subohm drop in coil market and are now mainstream. What about pods? What temps do they operate at and what if any VOCs do they produce? It's always a moving target in such a rapidly developing technology.
This paragraph is actually backwards. The higher the VG, the LESS formaldehyde at any given level and the higher the temp before it really started elevating. It was the 90VG/10DW that was the safest. At my suggestion he went back and retested by adding DW to other mixtures (such as 45PG/45VG/10DW and 90PG/10DW) and adding the DW consistently improved the results across the board.
To be clear at no point in Mike's tests, not at any temp did the formaldehyde production get anywhere even close to what a cigarette produces. IIRC at the highest temps it was still only about 10% of what a cigarette produces.
No it's not good to breathe but it's unavoidable. New clothes, new furniture, even ambient air has formaldehyde in it. Not only that the FDA approves it's use in vaccines. The point is that in small enough quantities our bodies can handle nearly anything. Vaping done right, will yield less than 1 part per billion which is below the safety level required for ambient air in the workplace (which means constant every breath for an 8 hour workday). So to me getting less than that only for occasional breaths all day should be significantly better.
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