Cigarettes have a plethora of nasty chemicals and their effects are know. Included in that list is ammonia, formaldehyde, urea, lead, and benzene. Ejuice, the liquid used in ecigs, is nicotine, propylene glycol (PG), Vegetable Glycerin (VG), and flavor additives that have been approved for consumption by The Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In fact, PG and VG are also approved additives. Smoking also produces carbon monoxide, which is not produced by vaping. Obviously, vaping is not as good for you as breathing in just air. Vaping still produces, although at mostly very low levels, some harmful chemicals are still produced. The aerosol contains metal particles, but no where near the levels of cigarettes.
If one looks at the research literature on ecigs, the overwhelming conclusions are that they are significantly less harmful than smoking, but that more studies need to be done. Some studies have found controversial findings, such as one that generated formaldehyde at very high temperatures, but that study was debunked since it was only produced at high heat levels that vapes don't use. In other words, it was produced in a non real world condition. Another chemical that was found in ejuice was diacetyl, a butter flavoring used for popcorn and famously linked to "popcorn lung," which is irreversible. However, if one looks at ingredients from most ejuice manufacturers now, it is stated explicitly that diacetyl is not used. Studies on second hand vapor and environmental air quality show chemical levels are negligible, but PG can irritate someone's nasal passages, eyes, and sometimes lungs, although surprisingly, it's used in asthma inhalers as well as prescription nicotine inhalers. One needs to keep in mind that some of the studies producing negative results are funded by big tobacco.
This is a new industry and the chemicals used are approved for consumption but not inhalation, so not enough is known at this point and more research needs to be done. In England, where ecigs have been available much longer, it was concluded that their use is a significant benefit to public health over cigarettes and that they are 95% safer to use. Not vaping and just breathing in air is obviously better, but vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking, by leaps and bounds, in fact. The general conclusion is that it's not harmless, but an incredible harm reduction for smokers and is causing a major shift that tobacco companies are feeling the effects of to the point where they're doing more research on and acquiring ecig brands, as well as developing their own.
There are strong political implications on many levels here. Vaping is often regulated for use the same way as cigarettes despite them being insignificant in affecting air quality. In California, it was decided that they should be treated as cigarettes, along with an alarmist public health article, but when I looked at the citations, the presence of harmful chemicals inhaled/exhaled was mostly negligible and in 9 to 750 times less the concentration than in cigarettes. Since effects of inhaling the ingredients are not known, there's often a paranoid outlook of "We should ban them because we don't know what's in them" and "What about the children?" If you're afraid of something that could be harmful, but the long term effects are not known, that's similar to thinking one shouldn't drive because it's dangerous or one shouldn't go outside because it's a big, bad, scary world out there, so xenophobia reigns supreme. Clearly, there is a concern about teenagers using ecigs and they do come in flavors like bubblegum and gummy bears, so that attraction is understandable, but it's not taken into account that kids experiment with drugs both legal and illegal and will always do so.
There's also a push towards regulating the vaping industry. Most of the equipment comes from China and there are no production standards to prevent making products that don't work or are dangerous, but the industry and users often rate the products and are not shy about letting others know which brands are reliable and which aren't. This also is reasonable since they are selling products with nicotine and there's no regulation on the ingredients for inhalation purposes or how they're made, but regulation requirements are costly. Stores and manufacturers would have to register their formulas for each flavor with The FDA, which is expensive enough that it would cause the stores and manufacturers to go out of business, which would leave only big tobacco left to make and market the devices and ejuice. Addictive additives have been added to tobacco products and the amounts have increased over the past ten years, so they're far more addictive now than they were ten years ago and there's no requirement for them to remove those additives, so one could easily conclude that if the only people with enough money to keep items on the shelf are big tobacco, they're likely to add those chemicals to their ecig products, too and without having to list them.
This issue is framed as a libertarian or conservative cause since it involves small businesses and potential obstacles to their success while supposed liberal entities are trying to make things safe for everyone. I'm politically liberal and feel that more objective approaches can be made to legislation that will ensure smaller businesses can prosper. Additionally, the alarmist responses have treated the few studies so far in a non-objective matter that isn't relevant to real world scenarios. Saying "they've got formaldehyde and are a threat to public health" when that's only produced with a non real world scenario is not objective, nor is a study claiming they cause cells in a petri dish to die 24 hours later but not noting that they die almost immediately when exposed to cigarette smoke is not objective.
It's understandable the one shouldn't vape in closed spaces like airplanes and small spaces since the chemicals can irritate people and are unpleasant to smell sometimes, but the outlook that they're nearly as harmful as cigarettes could discourage people from quitting smoking, which has larger implications in public health policy and cost.
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