[mac_82]

Sounds like e-cigs are safer than cigs, but they are far from "safe" or "harmless" as they are being marketed as.

Good on anyone who is using one to quit smoking. But you shouldn't be using them in offices or any other public places that you wouldn't smoke in. It seems like every week more info comes out about how the vapour and 2nd hand vapour is still dangerous to you and people around you. Just not quite as dangerous and cigarette smoke.

A 2014 survey conducted by a team of researchers from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UC San Francisco looked at nearly 60 e-cigarette manufacturers websites and found that more than 90 percent of them cited e-cigs as healthier, cheaper, and cleaner than conventional cigarettes, 76 percent of them said that e-cigs do not produce secondhand smoke, and a quarter of them even used paid doctor endorsements to drive home those points—suggesting that some e-cig companies are only paying lip service to the FDA's stringent requirements about labeling.

Another recent study published in the journal Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology showed that e-cigarette performance was virtually identical to that of regular cigarettes in terms of exhaled nitric oxide rates.

Nitric oxides cause the smooth muscles in the lungs and heart to relax, which can lead to reduced lung function and increased risk of heart attack. The more NO your body retains, the worse it is for you. And bear in mind, these are studies conducted using the products of top-shelf manufacturers. There's an entire other issue with harmful additives used by less scrupulous offshore firms that we're not even getting into.

What we do know is in e-cigs is not reassuring. Multiple studies have found chemicals like acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, and toluene, as well as heavy metals like cadmium, nickel, and lead, in both first and second-hand vapor. Again, these were present in concentrations a magnitude lower than conventional cigarettes but at high enough levels that they could arguably fall under California's Proposition 65 rules for mandatory labeling of their carcinogenic nature.

According to Maciej Goniewicz of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, using a current generation variable voltage vape on maximum can produce the same amount of formaldehyde as a regular cigarette. That's not good.

Altogether, between 20 and 27 percent of e-cigarette vapor's ultrafine particles make their way into the circulatory system, compared to 25 to 35 percent for regular cigarettes. A recent report from Science News points out that these nanoparticles can trigger inflammation in the mucus membrane and have been linked to chronic diseases like asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes.

http://gizmodo.com/why-e-cigarettes-...ink-1589485508