I fucking hate cigs and I fucking hate e cigs.
So is there any research at all about the safety?
"Well, an article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine should move the discussion from a fallacious precautionary principle to a serious concern about the the safety of ECs. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a powerful tool used by biochemists to identify small concentrations of organic molecules, the researchers looked not at the pre-aerosolized liquid, which seems to contain safe compounds, but at the aerosol itself after vaping.
What they found may substantially increase concerns about the safety of vaping. The propylene glycol, which is in the pre-vaping liquid, breaks down, over time, into formaldehyde. The reaction between the electronic aerosolizer, propylene glycol, glycerol and formaldehyde creates a "formaldehyde releasing agent," called formaldehyde hemiacetals, which are known as industrial biocides. Not good, even at the small levels within an EC aerosol.
Formaldehyde itself, in small amounts, is not dangerous. One's own body creates formaldehyde as a byproduct of numerous biochemical reactions. Many foods contain lots of formaldehyde. But at those levels, it's far below the dose implicated in any health risk.
But at higher levels, formaldehyde is strongly associated with certain cancers. It is considered a Group 1 compound, carcinogenic to humans, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (pdf), making it one of the 114 compounds that are known carcinogens. And remember, this formaldehyde is heading to one of the most environmentally sensitive organs in the body, the lungs, mouth, throat, etc.
The researchers found that an e-cigarette user vaping at a rate of 3 ml per day (an average) would inhale 14.4±3.3 mg of formaldehyde per day in formaldehyde-releasing agents. In toxicology, it's not the presence of something like formaldehyde that matters, it's the actual dose. And this is where it gets interesting.
So, what does 14.4 mg mean to one's health. Well, an average pack of tobacco cigarettes (20 of them) would deliver 3 mg of formaldehyde to the smoker. In effect, the EC smoker is inhaling nearly 5 packs of cigarettes worth of formaldehyde.
Now to be fair, tobacco based cigarettes have more than just formaldehyde as carcinogens. But how dangerous is 14.4 mg of formaldehyde?
The researchers calculated the increased lifetime risk of cancer for a tobacco cigarette who smoked one pack per day to be about 900 out of a million, meaning if you took a population of 1 million people, smoking cigarettes would mean 900 more people would contract cancer than the same population with no smokers.
Based on the level of 14.4 mg of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, it would be estimated that inhaling 3 ml of electronic cigarette liquid in aerosol form would lead to a lifetime risk of cancer 4200 out of a million, nearly 5X larger risk than smoking cigarettes. The cancer risk might be substantially higher because of the type and nature of the form of formaldehyde created by the vaping process."
Fuck Cigs, Fuck E-cigs, Fuck Nicotine, Smoke Weed