Hello everyone,,
Before people start jumping on the anecdote and blind-hate train because the article shows a potential negative of vaping over not vaping:
Please observe that this study didn't just use blu or commercial e-cigs, and did use local vape shop sourced liquids. Some people are already commenting that it didn't and should be discarded for that reason.
Also, whether you like to admit it or not, people do in fact pick up vaping that were not smokers because they view it as a safe way to get nicotine. This article is not meant to crucify vapers or suggest that vaping is somehow worse than smoking. It is meant to show potential ill effects of vaping.
I haven't had time to read the full article, but the methodology seems adequate for the observations they're trying to make. Will post a full breakdown later.
Edit for some breakdown:
So in terms of methodology. There's basically nothing wrong? They didn't burn out the coil like some papers do. The one potential issue is that they didn't make an "extract" of vape juice. My lab has tried to do this and it's not easy compared to making a CSE (cigarette smoke extract). So they just took the components of the juice and put it into the dishes directly. That seems fine, and they probably made a curve initially to find out what concentration of each doesn't outright kill things. Plus for this to make a huge difference you would need to assume that when you vaporize e-cig juice that there is 0 or a marginal amount of "unvaporized" liquid.
Basically what this paper tries to ask is "is vaping worse than not vaping?" It doesn't ask "is vaping worse than smoking?" Expecting it to answer both or fully answer one is expecting the work of 1 research lab and paper to do the job of several hundred labs and papers.
Going down to the actual conclusions you can draw from this paper.
3) They do say that previous studies show that toxic substances produced by heating the liquids are 9 to 807 times lower than from cigarettes, but in this study they're looking at OX/ROS produced from vaping e-cig juice. No one has looked at that angle before, and this should be something taking into consideration.
4) Backing up the flavoring issue pointed out above. They mention that nicotine seems to not contribute to the OX/ROS they observe.
Personal opinion: I think it would be cool if people did a study where they took different flavoring agents themselves and did more studies. Maybe in the future we'll have some sort of "vaporizing safe" flavorings that are at least minimally harmful/oxidizing. It makes sense that flavorings that we eat don't behave the same when inhaled. Your lungs and your gut are different setups of epithelial layers with different environments after all.
Edit: I just want to add that e-cig smokers already try to avoid certain flavorings. Butter and custard flavorings, and some cinnamon flavorings have stigmas or OSHA statements that they are harmful. A lot of people in electronic_cigarette back when I vaped would post PSAs about these things, and a lot of juice makers would state that they specifically did not use these flavorings. This study sets up a good sort of framework for testing flavorings and comparing them (by measuring ROS/OX production when vaped). The only regulation on e-cigs I'm cool with is basically no minors and at least make sure that the flavorings companies use aren't toxic (like the butter one). Right now no one is around to force or tell companies making juice to stop using diacetyl. Regulating it like it's a tobacco product however is dumb. It's not tobacco.
Before people start jumping on the anecdote and blind-hate train because the article shows a potential negative of vaping over not vaping:
Please observe that this study didn't just use blu or commercial e-cigs, and did use local vape shop sourced liquids. Some people are already commenting that it didn't and should be discarded for that reason.
Also, whether you like to admit it or not, people do in fact pick up vaping that were not smokers because they view it as a safe way to get nicotine. This article is not meant to crucify vapers or suggest that vaping is somehow worse than smoking. It is meant to show potential ill effects of vaping.
I haven't had time to read the full article, but the methodology seems adequate for the observations they're trying to make. Will post a full breakdown later.
Edit for some breakdown:
So in terms of methodology. There's basically nothing wrong? They didn't burn out the coil like some papers do. The one potential issue is that they didn't make an "extract" of vape juice. My lab has tried to do this and it's not easy compared to making a CSE (cigarette smoke extract). So they just took the components of the juice and put it into the dishes directly. That seems fine, and they probably made a curve initially to find out what concentration of each doesn't outright kill things. Plus for this to make a huge difference you would need to assume that when you vaporize e-cig juice that there is 0 or a marginal amount of "unvaporized" liquid.
Basically what this paper tries to ask is "is vaping worse than not vaping?" It doesn't ask "is vaping worse than smoking?" Expecting it to answer both or fully answer one is expecting the work of 1 research lab and paper to do the job of several hundred labs and papers.
Going down to the actual conclusions you can draw from this paper.
- Some flavors of juice produce more oxidants than others. Some flavors also produced higher cytokine responses, like the cinnamon flavoring they tested. I remember when I vaped that the cinnamon flavoring had some warnings about it potentially rotting your teeth, making you lose sense of taste, etc and they cracked certain tanks (before I knew better I had a tank eaten away). So really this isn't that surprising that specific flavoring agents react differently within the body. It's also a finding that has been observed before.
- You probably should dry burn your carto/clearo first, just a tiny bit?
I didn't know that. They don't make any conclusions about it, but they at least could measure something happening. Nice to know.We also noticed that each time a new heating element was installed into the eGo ENDS, a small amount of aerosol could be produced without addition of any e-liquid suggesting there may be volatile substances associated with ENDS heating elements following manufacturing.
3) They do say that previous studies show that toxic substances produced by heating the liquids are 9 to 807 times lower than from cigarettes, but in this study they're looking at OX/ROS produced from vaping e-cig juice. No one has looked at that angle before, and this should be something taking into consideration.
4) Backing up the flavoring issue pointed out above. They mention that nicotine seems to not contribute to the OX/ROS they observe.
So just in case people didn't scroll down that far in the article, here are the conclusions the authors list.Although comparison of the 0 mg and 24 mg nicotine Vape Dudes e-liquid aerosols produced by the refillable ENDS did not appear to be statistically different in DCF fluorescence to one another (large sampling error), the aerosols produced from the nicotine containing e-liquid was on average less than the samples without nicotine. This supports a possible trend in the reduction of OX/ROS in the presence of nicotine because the aerosols produced from the Blu e-cig cartomizer containing 16 mg nicotine exhibits a significant reduction in OX/ROS compared to the nicotine free cartomizer. Similarly, we observed unvaporized nicotine containing e-liquid was less oxidative to DCFH. Therefore, nicotine vaporized using either device, at least does not appear to contribute to OX/ROS generated.
TL;DR - The flavoring is the potential difference in harmful effects with e-cig juice. Pure PG and VG didn't induce OX/ROS, but did alter morphology in the concentrations that they used here. Nicotine behaves like nicotine does in every other instance of nicotine.In conclusion, we showed that 1) OX/ROS are generated by vaporizing ENDS/e-cig e-liquids/e-juices and are further influenced by the state of the heating element, 2) differences in OX/ROS reactivity in e-liquids prior to vaporization is associated with e-liquid flavor, 3) e-liquids can mediate effects on lung cell morphology and affect viability, 4) e-cig aerosols can modulate levels of oxidative stress and inflammation markers in both lung cells and mouse lungs, and 5) e-cig aerosols affect in vivo in lung glutathione redox physiology implicating oxidative stress.
Personal opinion: I think it would be cool if people did a study where they took different flavoring agents themselves and did more studies. Maybe in the future we'll have some sort of "vaporizing safe" flavorings that are at least minimally harmful/oxidizing. It makes sense that flavorings that we eat don't behave the same when inhaled. Your lungs and your gut are different setups of epithelial layers with different environments after all.
Edit: I just want to add that e-cig smokers already try to avoid certain flavorings. Butter and custard flavorings, and some cinnamon flavorings have stigmas or OSHA statements that they are harmful. A lot of people in electronic_cigarette back when I vaped would post PSAs about these things, and a lot of juice makers would state that they specifically did not use these flavorings. This study sets up a good sort of framework for testing flavorings and comparing them (by measuring ROS/OX production when vaped). The only regulation on e-cigs I'm cool with is basically no minors and at least make sure that the flavorings companies use aren't toxic (like the butter one). Right now no one is around to force or tell companies making juice to stop using diacetyl. Regulating it like it's a tobacco product however is dumb. It's not tobacco.
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