[ernie]

While there has been some recent suggestions from Europe that e-cigs are less harmful and should help reduce smoking related diseases I will repeat what was said earlier.

Nicotine itself has adverse health effects including being a potential carcinogen. While not a proven carcinogen it has been shown to increase tumour growth rates, increase recurrence and do several other things that a cancer cell will take advantage of to spread. It impacts heart health.

Many will say it stands to reason that getting rid of all the other stuff will be helpful, however, the real effects are unknown at this time. For example, many smokers turned to low tar/low nicotine cigarettes in the past. The result is minimal as the smoker compensates by inhaling more. IN this case there may well be biochemical effects...does the matrix help get nicotine into the body thus actually increasing nicotine levels in the body (i.e. just because the vaping cartridge suggests less nicotine than a cigarette is that actually the case when it comes to putting it in your body)? What does the matrix itself do? Propylene glycol is toxic for example. I find it weird that it goes into e-cig juice for people to inhale on purpose but at a commercial facility the exposure limit is 10 mg/m3. And of course given there is no regulatory control there is also no ingredient control. The flavoring have generally never been tested for inhalation but simply ingestion. Route of exposure makes a huge difference when it comes to chemicals.

There is also research that suggest that vaping results in the same amount of aerosols depositing in the lungs compared to regular cigarettes. This level happens to be 100 times higher than the exposure limit for small particle aerosols. The solvents etc are often lung irritants which may exasperate lung conditions related to inflammation. The solvents used can break down to more dangerous chemicals when exposed to heat. Vaping may reduce natural antibiotics produced by the body.

There are only unknowns when it comes to long term use of e-cigs. Is it less dangerous than smoking? Are the dangers just being replaced with other unrecognized dangers?

So use it to help break your addiction but it likely shouldn't be used as a long term habit to replace a different long term habit on the assumption the new habit is better for you long term (which wouldn't be breaking the addiction). That's something we just don't know at this time and as mentioned nicotine itself is problematic.

IMO this is an industry that needs to be regulated until the science is actually in. In all likelihood that science is going to show that the answer is get rid of the addiction not change the method people satisfy their addiction. And I'll be honest I suspect we are going to see the same type of thing as seen for cigarettes...science is going to say one thing and the companies are going to say something else. And given most of the companies are going to be run by big tobacco in short order that isn't a comforting thought. It's already started with one e-cig CEO I read saying things like "they say they find all sorts of things in the the vapor but if we don't find those things you have to question the motives of the other side." Indeed. Though i tend to question the motives of the side making the billions of dollars on a product that simply has no safety testing behind it.