Article: You should probably stop vaping flavoured e-cigs right now

[ZT]

aargh! no text

 

[Lucille]

Sorry lol, I've edited it.

 

[ZT]

Yeah, I sincerely hope they find it's safer than cigs! Does anyone know why the lack of research? The only thing I could find out about the DRI funding is part came from NASA, oh well, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find out no matter how much I dug around.

Btw, sorry did not mean to quote you there, computer had some kind of spasm!

There isn't a lack of research .. there has been loads

its around if you look for it .. mostly positive as well .. trouble is the few non positive ones that pop up like this get bigger headlines

 

[Lucille]

Thanks. I'm not necessarily looks for positive or negative ones, just trying to get an objective view. I just expected to find hundreds looking at ecig toxins on google scholar but am only coming up with a handful. I'll try different search terms. Thanks for the reply!

 

[mannikon]

I understand reading shite like this report online results in electrons entering the brain through the eyeballs resulting in eventual death.
The alternative is ink on paper but the fingers absorb the deadly ink leading to internal rot and decrease in immortality.
Keep vaping, it's much safer ...

 

[Cotswold Vapour]

James over at @vandykevapes got in touch with the guy who published the study earlier today, and learned a couple of things -

1. The guy claimed that their was no big tobacco / big pharma funding - fair enough.

2. This study tested raw flavour compounds. He also told james that diluting with PG and VG (i.e. producing an e-liquid) decreased aldehyde production "exponentially". At the tiny levels these raw compounds are found at in e-liquids, it's probably fair to say there is little cause for concern.

 

[danb]

so they want you to pay $40 for 48 hours to view the full report. they can go swivel on a cucumber.

If you (or anyone else) are blocked by a paywall for a paper you want to read, PM me.

I haven't read it yet, will do tomorrow.

 

[MrDJ]

cheers fella. wasnt bothered really about reading it as its all bollox but just posted that price as it doesnt show you much unless you registered and paid.
id rater watch paint dry to be honest.

 

[danb]

OK, so I briefly read the source article in Environmental Science & Technology (link) this morning. Note that the "supporting information" pdf is free to access, and Table S3 essentially contains all the relevant data in the paper.

Long story short: They appear to be operating under dry puff conditions.

Briefly, the study finds that the main source of harmful aldehydes (principally formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein) in vape aerosol is the flavourings, not VG/PG. Their evidence for this is that unflavoured e-liquid produces almost no concerning compounds. I think this is useful information to have.

They also found that concerning amounts of the aldehydes were present in the vape aerosol under their test conditions. So, let's look at the hardware setup:

Brand I: Kanger evod, 11W
Brand II: V2 cigalike, 5W
Brand III: CE4, 5W

Brand I (evod) produced the most aldehydes and the levels were concerningly high. Brand III (CE4) also produced high levels of aldehydes, Brand II (cigalike) was far lower. I'm not going to say anything more about the cigalike, because cigalikes are irrelevant here.

The CE4 was a 3 Ohm coil on an ego-T. Their power calculation is based on a nominal voltage of 3.9 V (should be 3.7 V AFAIK). The ego-T is a non-adjustable pen battery and outputs the battery voltage like a mech, it is not clear whether the device was always used with a fresh charge. Lots of potential for inconsistency here. This doesn't change the fact that high levels of adehydes were detected, it just leads me to question whether comparing results from different liquids used with this device is meaningful.

I used to vape with evods in 2013, and anyone who has will tell you 11 W is a recipe for a monster dry hit, 7-8 W was my upper limit. And this is where the alarming levels of aldehydes become less of a concern. The levels produced by the evod in this experiment are about 4-5 times higher than those previously demonstrated by Farsalinos to be detectable as a dry hit (link). Farsalinos showed in that paper that vapers detected and avoided dry hits as low as approx:

10 ug/puff formaldehyde
6 ug/puff acetaldehyde

^that is what a dry hit looks like in numbers.

Let's look at the evod:

35-50 ug/puff formaldehyde
18-28 ug/puff acetaldehyde

Ouch. Doubt I could vape that. Pretty much the fart of Satan you would expect from running an evod at 11W

And the CE4:

1-22 ug/puff
0-24 ug/puff

So highly variable and prone to dry hits. Well, we all knew that that is the classic CE4 experience.

Basically, it appears that these devices are being run in dry puff conditions and would not be vapable by a person. The authors of the study acknowledge that dry puffs exist, but do not mention any attempt to check whether they are measuring vapable aerosol or acrid dry hits. Given the numbers and the previous work by Farsalinos, I expect they are measuring dry hits, and once again we have a study that is not replicating real life vaping.

 

[domejunky]

James over at @vandykevapes got in touch with the guy who published the study earlier today, and learned a couple of things -

1. The guy claimed that their was no big tobacco / big pharma funding - fair enough.

2. This study tested raw flavour compounds. He also told james that diluting with PG and VG (i.e. producing an e-liquid) decreased aldehyde production "exponentially". At the tiny levels these raw compounds are found at in e-liquids, it's probably fair to say there is little cause for concern.

Poor methodology writeup if you have to phone an author to get this information...