The Unwarranted Fearmongering That Surrounds E-Cigarette Use

*RTS Vapes does not offer any medical advice. This is an opinion based post

Just the other day I was looking for some e-cigarette studies to read, and first search result from Google was a recently updated post from the American Lung Association®. The title of this post “American Lung Association Statement on E-Cigarettes”, I was intrigued. I began reading and the more I read, the more aggravated I became. While some of the statements cannot be refuted, the lack of any data being provided and zero references given immediately turned me off to the post. So I resumed my hunt for a peer-reviewed, scholarly work (the only kind recognized in the scientific community). The next article I came across was a review article in the Journal for Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety titled “Safety evaluation and risk assessment of electronic cigarettes as tobacco cigarette substitutes: a systematic review” written by Konstantinos E. Farsalinos and Riccardo Polosa. This is a very thorough review published in April 2014 that goes into length about the article selection process for articles that were included in the review. It has everything that a good article should from analytical data to over one hundred references. In this post I will touch on just a few of the points from the review regarding the safety of e-cigarette use.

In 2013 the World Health Organization stated that there are nearly 6 million deaths annually as a direct result of tobacco cigarette use, with a predicted death toll of 1 billion in the 21^st century. A 1992 report from the EPA revealed that a conventional cigarette contains more than 4000 chemicals and carcinogens present in the smoke emitted. Then in 1993 a study by Pryor and Stone revealed that each puff from a cigarette contained more than 1 x 10¹⁵ free radicals. If you are having trouble visualizing what that number looks like, let me help: 1,000,000,000,000,000. One fallacy that is being promoted by Big Tobacco and physicians is that nicotine is a carcinogen. According to the World Health Organization – International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2004, nicotine is not classified as a carcinogen and does not promote lung disease. Nicotine intake through Nicotine Replacement Therapies (NRTs) has been demonized in the eye of the public by the media, even though it has been shown that nicotine intake may have beneficial effects in treating some disorders. Studies that have shown this beneficial effect are:

Disease Studied	Author(s)	Year the Study was Published
Parkinson’s	Nielsen et al.	2013
Depression	McClernon et al.	2006
Dementia	Sahakian et. al.	1989
ulcerative Colitis	Guslandi	1999

Another public fear is that electronic cigarette users will overdose on nicotine. This very unlikely for vapers since three different studies by Farsalinos et al. 2013, Nides et al. 2014, and Dawkins and Corcoran 2013 have all shown that the amount consumed and actually absorbed is quite low. In 2013 a study done by Etter et al. tested 20 e-liquids and found that the actual nicotine levels were off by about 20 % above and below the labeled amount. I believe the root of this problem goes back to some nicotine suppliers not testing the strength of the nicotine that they are selling to the customer to ensure accuracy and quality. That is why here at RTS Vapes we test every batch of flavorless liquid nicotine before the product is bottled to ensure that it meets the US Standard for Weights and Measures. With that said, this goes back to the studies mentioned before that it is unlikely to overdose because vapers much like smokers self-titrate their nicotine intake. For example I vape all day at 3 mg/mL, but if someone gives me a bottle that is 6 mg/mL I notice that I do not pick up my mod as much throughout the day.

Going back to the post that sparked this blog post, they talk about tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), formaldehyde, and benzene trying to scare the public without even giving a reference. A study done by Cahn and Siegel in 2011 reported that the amount of TSNAs were similar to those found in pharmaceutical NRTs. The best study done on TSNAs in e-liquids was performed by Kim and Shin in 2013. They evaluated 105 liquids and found that on average the liquids contained 12.00 ηg/mL. The daily exposure to these chemicals by smokers (with an average of 15 cigarettes per day) is estimated to be up to 1800 times higher when compared to e-cigarette users.

There is so much more information in the article that I cannot relay in a blog post, so please give the article a read and post in the comments below with your thoughts or questions.

By: Joshua Sheffield, Chemist at RTS Vapes

*RTS Vapes does not offer any medical advice. This is an opinion based post