KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Vaping, one of the fastest growing trends in the smoking world, is putting potentially cancer-causing chemicals into the bodies of users, according to new research released this week.
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With at least eight vape shops in Santa Clarita, and hundreds spread throughout L.A. County, many believe that the quick rise of these e-vape alternatives to traditional cigarettes is due to the fact that vaping is not a danger to health — an idea recently disputed by Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which published a study Wednesday claiming = harmful chemicals, including several that may cause cancer, are being inhaled every time somebody vapes.
“The problem is, (not being traditional cigarettes) doesn’t mean that they’re healthy,” said Berkeley Lab researcher and the study’s author, Hugo Destaillats. “Regular cigarettes are super unhealthy. E-cigarettes are just — unhealthy.”
Medical professionals in Santa Clarita say that the prevalence of vaping among young people is due to the lack of research into the e-cigarette industry.
“We don’t know (exactly) what’s in e-cigarettes,” said Rochelle Feldman, the medical director at Prima Pediatrics. “All of them (contain) known carcinogens in large amounts”
Vape companies, she said, are keeping the exact makeup of the liquid close to their chests while the market continues to grow.
However, the research by the Berkeley Lab is attempting to shed the light on the cloud of chemicals formed when vaping
“The thermal decomposition of propylene glycol and glycerin, two solvents found in most “e-liquids” (the substance that is vaporized by the e-cigarette), leads to emissions of toxic chemicals such as acrolein and formaldehyde,” according to the lab’s release about the study.
Get live news updates about Santa Clarita by following KHTS on Facebook and KHTS on TwitterFeldman added all vaping, even when done with non-nicotine vape juice, is still drawing the chemicals into user’s lungs.
“If they were pure water vapor they would be fine. But I don’t know of any on the market that are pure water vapor.”
A local vape shop owner responded to the findings of the study, saying that e-cigarettes are still much safer than cigarettes.
“Vaping is by no means as healthy as going to the gym,” said Shawn Oakley, owner of SCV Vape. “However if you’re a smoker, it’s much much healthier for you than traditional cigarettes.”
Oakley said studies similar to the Berkeley research usually increase the voltage in the e-cigarette coils, which vaporize the e-liquid that is smoked, beyond levels found in consumer products, which he said average out to 3.8V.
However, the Berkeley researchers study claims the carcinogens in e-cigarettes are present within consumer products.
“They found that as the voltage increased, both the amount of e-liquid consumed per puff and the vapor temperature were higher,” read the lab’s release. “In the case of acrolein and formaldehyde, the amount formed at the highest voltage of 4.8V was an order of magnitude higher than the amount at the lowest voltage of 3.3V.”
An abstract from the journal Environmental Science and Technology laid out a summary of the findings, summarizing them in simple terms.
“Harmful emissions are expected to be ubiquitous when e-cigarette vapor is present,” it read.
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And this is a surprise?
God I’ll be glad when these things finally kill me so I don’t have to listen to or read another word from you whiny, meddling twits. Don’t you have lives of your own? We wanted to go to bars and have a beer and a cigarette; but could you build no smoking bars, no you had to be where we were. We bust our butts all day and come home from work and want to sit and have a cigarette. Do we come to your place to smoke and go home? No we mind our own business and live our lives. You hide behind the children, “Do it for the Chiiilllldreeen”. At least have the guts to say we want to control your life because ours doesn’t seem to be all that fulfilling. There was cancer before cigarettes, cigars and vaping. As I cough up that last piece of lung at the end the first letters of the last words I say will be FYA.
You can bet the farm that this “research” was funded and encouraged by the tobacco industry which sees yet further diminished sales as a real potential effect of the popular growth of vaping. This is how American capitalism works to the detriment of everybody’s health. The sugar industry falsely demonized sugar substitutes as cancer causing in similar cynical studies. Always consider the source.
Basically, what they are saying is putting a loaded gun to your head and holding the trigger after having a zillion cups of coffee in your hands is dangerous. Putting a loaded gun to your head and holding the trigger after having 2 million cups of coffee is safer. No. Neither is ‘safe’. Both are disgusting. Both WILL eventually kill the user. The only ONLY difference between tobacco and ‘vape’ is regulation and knowledge about the ingredients. We don’t know anything about vape liquid, other than it is sugary (most of the time) to get kids hooked.
better pack that vape with hash oil!!!!
States and cities must make possession, due to explosions and fires, and use, due to carcinogenic environmental emissions, of e-cigarettes in ALL multifamily housing illegal, not just in public housing under HUD Section 8 jurisdiction; OSHA must make possession and use of them at workplaces illegal around the clock, indoors and outdoors, including in parking lots; CPSC must make it illegal to import them into the USA; and the FAA must make it illegal to bring them on airliners in carry-on bags, including pockets and purses, again due to the fact that they detonate and incinerate.
This study does not reveal anything that was not commmon knowledge. E-cigarettes can emit toxic combustion products when set to high power levels. Those are easy to avoid because safe power level charts have been freely available online for years. Even if the charts are not used the burnt taste of overheated vapour is obvious to most people.
The contents of all vaping “juice” made in North America are well known. The main ingredients are propylene glycol and glycerine. Both of those substances have been classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) by the FDA for decades. Both compounds are available in industrial quantities and are nearly as cheap as dirt. The flavourings are all standard compounds that have been used to flavour foods for decades. They are also cheap and readily available. There is nothing in any North American e-juice that is known to cause cancer or is otherwise harmful unless the fluid is vapourized at such high power levels that it starts to burn. It is easy to vape at low or moderate power levels so the Berkely study is worthless.
No one has still to date come up with a run down of what chemicals are being emitted and how much. We in technoland call this “handwaving.” I want to know exactly what is bring emitted and a run down comparison with regular. Some of the chemicals mentioned are evolved like acrolein are also evolved from cooking bacon. Saying and I paraphrase “We don’t know exactly what is in E-Cigarettes…” and then in the next breath saying “They are full of carcinogens” is the worst form of lying to people especially kids. Either you know or you don’t. I can not for a moment believe that someone can’t get a bunch of e-cigarette apparatus and build a machine to smoke and analyze them in some private lab and say “Here are the results.” This is like that old saw that “smoke from Cannabis Cigarette is 1000 times more toxic than Tobacco Cigarettes…” Kids have a “BS detector” that is almost always set on high. The one thing they appreciate and to which many of them will respond is the truth. Please take steps to present this in a way that is clear and accurate. Both sides should refrain from jingoism.