Vaping instead of smoking still exposes you to toxic metals like lead — here's how worried you should be
- Some of the same toxic metals that can be found in cigarettes were also found in e-cigs Shutterstock Tobacco plants are sponges for toxic substances. ...
- We need more research on regular vapers, rather than simply on devices as sold in stores ...
- The largest report on the health effects of vaping still suggests that toxic substances in e-cigs are lower than in regular cigarettes ...
What chemicals does vaping expose you to?
Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes can contain harmful and potentially harmful ingredients, including:ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs.flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease.volatile organic compounds.heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.
Does vaping leave metal in your lungs?
Doctors have discovered yet another way that vaping — and vaping THC, in particular — can damage the lungs: when the metal coils of electronic cigarettes heat up to turn e-liquids into aerosols, toxic metals can leach into the liquid, leading to a rare condition usually only seen in industrial metal workers.
What toxic metals are in vaping?
Chromium and nickel, found in multiple e-cigarette brands,8 have been linked to respiratory diseases, including lung cancer. 9 10 Chromium and nickel compounds are used in electroplating, welding, and other industrial processes. Manganese and lead exposure may cause neurological and developmental defects.
What are 5 risks of vaping?
Vaping has been linked to lung injury.Rapid onset of coughing.Breathing difficulties.Weight loss.Nausea and vomiting.Diarrhea.
Does vape juice have metal in it?
Most metal/metalloid levels found in biosamples of e-cigarette users were similar or higher than levels found in biosamples of conventional cigarette users, and even higher than those found in biosamples of cigar users.
Do disposable vapes have metal in them?
The elements calcium, sodium, copper, magnesium, tin, lead, zinc, boron, selenium, aluminum, iron, germanium, antimony, nickel and strontium were found in electronic smoking devices at higher concentrations compared to regular cigarettes.
Can you have metal in your lungs?
Metallic dusts deposited in the lung may give rise to pulmonary fibrosis and functional impairment, depending on the fibrogenic potential of the agent and on poorly understood host factors. Inhalation of iron compounds causes siderosis, a pneumoconiosis with little or no fibrosis.
Does a vape set off a metal detector?
Yes, vapes can be detected by metal detectors. These detectors are typically used to identify the carriage of weapons or other metal objects, metal detectors are a tool more frequently being used to uncover vapes and e-cigarette devices because they can easily detect the metal within most vape devices.
What metals are in vaping?
Studies have confirmed the presence of several heavy metals in vaping devices including lead, nickel, chromium, and manganese, with the amount increasing in high-voltage products.
What are the causes of heavy metal poisoning?
Heavy metal poisoning usually occurs due to pollution and contamination of air, water, food, or medicine, industrial exposure, improperly coated food containers, or ingestion of lead-based paint. Symptoms of poisoning can vary depending on the type of metal in question.
How to contact Juul?
If you or someone you love developed heavy metal poisoning from using e-cigarette products like JUUL, reach out to us online or by phone at (267) 214-8608 to schedule a consultation. Categories. JUUL E-Cigarettes.
Is vaping bad for you?
The Dangers of Vaping. Smoking e-cigarettes has been proven to be equally as detrimental as traditional cigarettes, if not even more dangerous. Vaping can lead to heavy metal poisoning and similar issues found in cigarette smokers.
Is Juul a good alternative to tobacco?
E-cigarettes like JUUL have been growing in popularity in the past several years, and are often marketed as a safer alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes. However, research has demonstrated that vaping can lead to many of the same illnesses as smoking, including heavy metal poisoning.
Can e-cigarettes cause heavy metal poisoning?
Respiratory disease. We appreciate how difficult it is to heal from injuries related to e-cigarette use, including heavy metal poisoning. Such conditions can lead to significant hardship mentally, financially, and emotionally for the suffering individuals and their families.
What are e-cigarette coils made of?
E-cigarette heating coils typically are made of nickel, chromium and a few other elements, making them the most obvious sources of metal contamination, although the source of the lead remains a mystery. Precisely how metals get from the coil into the surrounding e-liquid is another mystery. “We don’t know yet whether metals are chemically leaching from the coil or vaporizing when it’s heated,” Rule says. In an earlier study of the 56 vapers, led by Angela Aherrera, MPH, a DrPH student at the Bloomberg School, the levels of nickel and chromium in urine and saliva were related to those measured in the aerosol, confirming that e-cigarette users are exposed to these metals.
What are the toxic metals in e-cigarettes?
Significant amounts of toxic metals, including lead, leak from some e-cigarette heating coils and are present in the aerosols inhaled by users, according to a study from scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
How does an e-cigarette work?
E-cigarettes typically use a battery-supplied electric current that passes through a metal coil to heat nicotine-containing “e-liquids,” creating an aerosol—a mix including vaporized e-liquid and tiny liquid droplets . Vaping, the practice of inhaling this aerosol as if it were cigarette smoke, is now popular especially among teens, young adults and former smokers. A 2017 survey of 8th-, 10th- and 12th-grade students in public and private schools, sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that about one in six had used e-cigarettes in the previous 30 days.
What metals are toxic in aerosols?
Of the metals significantly present in the aerosols, lead, chromium, nickel and manganese were the ones of most concern, as all are toxic when inhaled. The median lead concentration in the aerosols, for example, was about 15 µg/kg, or more than 25 times greater than the median level in the refill dispensers. Almost 50 percent of aerosol samples had lead concentrations higher than health-based limits defined by the Environmental Protection Agency. Similarly, median aerosol concentrations of nickel, chromium and manganese approached or exceeded safe limits.
Do e-cigarettes contain metal?
Consistent with prior studies, they found minimal amounts of metals in the e-liquids within refilling dispensers, but much larger amounts of some metals in the e-liquids that had been exposed to the heating coils within e-cigarette tanks. The difference indicated that the metals almost certainly had come from the coils. Most importantly, the scientists showed that the metal contamination carried over to the aerosols produced by heating the e-liquids.
Is arsenic in vapes toxic?
The researchers also detected significant levels of arsenic, a metal-like element that can be highly toxic, in refill e-liquid and in the corresponding tank e-liquid and aerosol samples from 10 of the 56 vapers. How the arsenic got into these e-liquids is yet another mystery—and another potential focus for regulators.
Who regulates e-cigarettes?
The Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate e-cigarettes but is still considering how to do so. The finding that e-cigarettes expose users—known as vapers—to what may be harmful levels of toxic metals could make this issue a focus of future FDA rules.
How many vapers were recruited to the Hopkins study?
In the Hopkins study, published Feb. 21 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, investigators recruited 56 vapers in the Baltimore area to see whether the heating process introduces toxins into what is inhaled. The researchers used the vapers' own e-cigarette devices when examining the chemical content of e-liquid, vapor and residue.
How does vaping work?
Unlike traditional smoking, vaping works by heating liquids that contain nicotine.
What device did the researchers use to examine the chemical content of e-liquid, vapor and residue?
The researchers used the vapers' own e-cigarette devices when examining the chemical content of e-liquid, vapor and residue.
What is in e-liquid?
The team found that e-liquid exposed to heating coils produced a vapor containing significant amounts of chromium, lead, manganese, nickel and zinc. Highly toxic arsenic was also found in both the e-liquid and the heated vapor among a subset of 10 vapers, though how that metal got into the unheated e-liquid remains unclear.
Can e-cigarettes contain lead?
Scientists say the tiny metal coils that heat the liquid nitrogen in e-cigarettes may contaminate the resulting vapor with lead, chromium, manganese and nickel. The finding raises the possibility that e-cigarettes are not harmless to users.
Do new coils produce more toxins?
The team also noted that toxic metal levels seemed to be higher among vapers who changed their heating coils more often, suggesting that new coils may produce more toxins than older ones.
Does vaping put you at risk?
Vaping manufacturers knowingly put you at risk.
What did they find? And what did they say they found?
The authors were aware of previous studies that measured metals in closed system, cigalike-style products, and wanted to instead test for metals in vape tanks , which are the most common products used by regular vapers. So they asked the vapers they had recruited to participate in the study to bring their own vape gear and refill e-liquid to the interview.
How did they find vapers willing to help with their research?
They “recruited 58 participants using tank-style devices through vaping conventions and flyers posted in e-cigarette shops.” Why would vape shops help any American vaping researcher, knowing that their grants are usually based on the understanding that they will produce evidence the FDA can use to regulate vapes? That’s a good question.
Why did the authors misrepresent their results?
The authors misrepresented their results to imply that the vapers’ exposure to dangerous metals was more dangerous than it actually was. And they decided that assuring sensational press coverage by exaggerating their results was more important than offering honest information.
Do vapers breathe vapor?
But vapers don’t breathe vapor constantly all day long. Environmental standards are the wrong way to measure something that is only inhaled occasionally.
Is there metal in e-liquid?
The truth of the study is that there are metals in e-liquid vapor — just not in high enough concentrations to be especially concerning. But vapers should be aware of it, and it’s probably something manufacturers should try to reduce as much as possible. That’s the story here.
Is vaping a common problem?
Unfortunately, vaping researchers willing to twist their results to shape regulations are all too common. The results seem clearly misinterpreted to create fear, and it’s difficult to believe that the authors didn’t do that deliberately. Naturally, the press release was available before the study was even published, and the authors eagerly participated in the gleefully scary coverage.
Who is Konstantinos Farsalinos?
Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos, a medical doctor and research fellow at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, Greece, caught the error (or deception) right away. Dr. Farsalinos has made a career of doing fair research on vapor products, and he’s done more than anyone to call out other scientists with lower standards.
What does the study say?
The study was conducted at Johns Hopkins University in the United States and measured the vaping devices of 56 everyday vapers. Whereas much of the research to date has been undertaken on devices purchased specifically for the purpose of study, or has focused on the effects of vapour production in cigalikes (rather than tanks and mods), this study asked the 56 vape users to bring in their own devices for study.
What metals are in vape liquid?
The researchers then measured the levels of a number of toxic metals like lead, chromium, nickel, and manganese, both in the eliquid and in the vapour. They found a significantly higher level of these metals in the vapour than in the eliquid, and concluded that something inside the vaping devices was leaching metal into the eliquid either while the eliquid was sitting in the tank, or when the eliquid was vapourised.
What is 95% harm reduction?
Harm reduction is about what a regular person can reasonably do to get by, and a 95% harm reduction vs. smoking is a huge step in the right direction.
Is vaping safer than smoking tobacco?
Remember the PHE study from earlier this year? Where they suggested putting vaping on the NHS? That study claimed that vaping was 95% less dangerous than smoking traditional tobacco.
Is vaping bad for you?
For example, since nicotine is a stimulant, it puts a mild stress on your body, just like caffeine does, and that’s probably not ideal. The goal of vaping isn’t har m elimination, but harm reduction.
Is the tobacco story the whole story?
It also helps that it’s the sort of story that powerful tobacco companies would love to see publishers producing more of. But it’s not the whole story. The whole story, of course, is a little less newsworthy.
Who is Konstantinos Farsalinos?
Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos, research fellow at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, puts it a little more clearly in a Facebook response to the study:
Why does vaping marijuana cause a lot of leaching?
Vaping marijuana raises the risk of this leaching, because the devices must be heated to much higher temperatures to aerosolize THC than to aerosolize nicotine. Previous research has shown that a greater amount of toxic substances are released as the voltage needed to heat vape devices increases.
What metals are in e-liquid?
When the doctors tested the e-liquid left in the device, they found several metals: nickel, aluminum, manganese, lead, cobalt and chromium.
How old is the woman who vapes?
A case report published Wednesday in the European Respiratory Journal describes a 49-year-old California woman who had symptoms now known to be associated with the more than 2,000 cases of vaping illnesses nationwide: shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing.
Where is the Mayo Clinic?
An analysis of lung tissue at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, for example, revealed the kind of burns normally seen when a person is exposed to a spilled drum of toxic chemicals.
Can vaping damage your lungs?
The illness is usually only seen in industrial metal workers. Doctors have discovered yet another way that vaping — and vaping THC, in particular — can damage the lungs: when the metal coils of electronic cigarettes heat up to turn e-liquids into aerosols, toxic metals can leach into the liquid, leading to a rare condition usually only seen in ...
Does Zenpen come with prefilled cartridges?
What she did have was the ZenPen brand vape pen she'd been using for six months prior to getting sick. ZenPens do not come with pre-filled cartridges, so users must purchase their e-liquid elsewhere. ZenPen did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.
Who is Erika Edwards?
Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."
