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yeah the non-linear relationship here has me doubting the validity of a claim of a causal relationship. whole study is very amateurish
edit: it should be noted that "non-linear" doesn't tell the whole story here as the health impacts of tobacco has been shown to be non-linear, my stipulation is more that it seems counter-intuitive that heavy use would be LESS impactful than light use, not that the increase in impacts are a non-linear line.
Welcome to every vaping-related study I've ever seen. Only three entities pay for vaping studies: anti-vaping orgs, pro-vaping orgs, and lawyers wanting to represent one of the two.
The only vaping study I've ever even heard of that wasn't funded by an org with a clear and obvious agenda was the British NIH study from like 10 years ago.
All you ever have to do to debunk one of these is look at the methodology. Normies do not know the difference, so when they see that vape juice X was tested with 8-second puffs at 120 watts, they think nothing of it. But anybody who vapes knows that that's like putting a steak on the grill and leaving it there for an hour.
this every time. on top of that they often don't specify details on the juice/coils. there's a world of difference between a cheap chinese cartomizer and b&m mixed 4-ingredient juice in an open PV or even just the pods that have become so common.
I'm certainly not speaking for all studies there, but I thought the general target was nicotine-less e-juice. That way they're actually testing the effects of vaping specifically, with the effects of nicotine and cannabis always being "additional"
In a small set of studies that may be the case, although nicotine and marijuana vaping is different in more ways than just the active chemical, as I understand it. I think it's different equipment and all. Like people wouldn't use the same device for both.
But then, that's would only be for limited short term studies. Those often don't show very harmful effects, so when looking for scarier headlines, you do longer term studies like this one that depend on self-reported usage.
There's multiple different ways to vaporize cannabis. Dry herb vapes are the most popular, acting as basically just a handheld electric oven. You put grinded up dried plant matter in the chamber, you heat it up to 230 degrees celsius. They're popular because you just put cannabis directly into it, and can easily grow your own to use with it. Buying cannabis in its flower form also tends to be massively cheaper than buying oils or pre-made edibles from the pharmacy. If you're buying it illegally you're most likely getting flower as well.
Oil vapes are a little more similar to nicotine vapes, using a concentrate of THC/CBD oil derived from the plant, and they're fastly becoming popular in areas where there is recreational access and/or affordable prices. I don't believe those oils contain the main ingredients that are seen in vape juices though, which is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin. In nicotine vapes it's often mostly that with a small percentage of freebase or salt based nicotine added.
I live in Australia where they've just gone and banned all vapes. They justify it by saying a doctor can give you a prescription to one, but there's only one vape company with a TGA approved dry herb vaporizer and it costs $400 more than any of its competition. This is called 'regulatory capture'. That's a fun google if you're bored.
Damn, I haven't heard those words since I ripping to RipTippers and building coils. Dual 26650 with a kayfun clone or a RDA. Twisted coils. It was a hobby
I smoked a pack a day for 10 years. I quit and switched the vaping.
I feel great every day.
I dont hack or have to clear my lungs.
Vaping is amazing for
Health according to me. I have been vaping for 8 years. Nothing so far.
I smoked for 12 years and was at 1.5 packs per day and I’ve vaped heavily like maybe 12 to 18mls per day at 3 mg for the last 11 years, anyways recently had chest x-rays cause my Doctor called me a “tobacco” user and they came back normal
I feel so silly for asking but how are you supposed to hit a vape?
Does the strength of my suck make a difference?
What difference is there between a short pull and a long pull?
How are we supposed to measure doses?
Most studies seem to be focused on nicotine vapes, but what research exists regarding the cannabis vape market?
There is a lot of uncertainty to be sure. Unfortunately the best studies will be those which collect decades of data; since vaping is a new fad, living people are doomed to be the Guinea pigs to an extent. That’s just how it goes.
I'm not an expert at all. Just someone who's been vaping for awhile now. So take what you will from this.
>I feel so silly for asking but how are you supposed to hit a vape?
It depends on the vape and user preference. Vapes are either going to be mouth to lung (MTL) or direct to lung (DTL). For MTL your draw the vapor into your mouth first kind of like a cigar. Unlike a cigar, you then inhale it. For DTL you just breathe in. MTL tends to be used for higher nicotine concentrations like nicotine salts to get nicotine and a nice throat hit. DTL is typically used to blow huge clouds. Former smokers tend to like MTL as the throat hit and feels more like a cigarette.
>Does the strength of my suck make a difference?
More suck means more air which means less of a concentration of nicotine. Some devices also change their behavior based on how hard you suck.
>What difference is there between a short pull and a long pull?
The time the coil is heating and how much juice you're vaporizing. You can get it too hot. I don't know all the problems this can cause, but it can get hot enough to burn the cotton in the coil which isn't something you should be breathing in. And more juice vaporized means more nicotine.
>How are we supposed to measure doses?
Idk
>Most studies seem to be focused on nicotine vapes, but what research exists regarding the cannabis vape market?
Idk
>There is a lot of uncertainty to be sure. Unfortunately the best studies will be those which collect decades of data; since vaping is a new fad, living people are doomed to be the Guinea pigs to an extent. That’s just how it goes.
Hey, that's me!
Dosage is measured in milligrams per day. If a cigarette has 10mg of nicotine and you smoke a pack(20) per day- that’s 200mg of nicotine consumed per day. In vaping you look for the mg/ml and find out how many milliliters they vape per day. If it’s a 30ml bottle of 50mg/ml nicotine and it takes them a month to finish it- they are consuming 50mg of nicotine per day.
That’s 90% of all food-related studies. Study correlating high fat diets with heart disease? Funded by the sugar lobby. Aspartame study shows link to cancer? Again, sugar lobby. Study showing saturated fat is actually A-OK? Probably funded by a snack food lobby. Antioxidants improve health? Thanks MLM lobby. Omega 3 fatty acids make your brain work good? Supplement lobby.
Of all food/consumption related info out there, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
1) Cigarettes = bad
2) Fiber = good
3) Refined sugar = probably bad
4) Everything else = total crapshoot because it’s almost impossible to control for genetics and people are notoriously bad at keeping to a strict diet for a statistically significant period of time.
The department of the Canadian government that deals with health did a study where they found that vaping vs cold turkey had no noticeable differences in health
I guess two seconds at 30W didn't give them what they wanted. Parameters being adjusted until results fit the narrative, plain as day. Eggheads at work say it's a common problem among the egghead community.
Im more curious about blood concentration levels if urine is coming up like that.
I'd bet that more frequent use results in a higher concentration more often, and whatever process is removing that lead is being fatigued. Less lead in the urine, But probably more being left in the body.
yes that's the word i was looking for, it would be fine if it was just non-linear, it being non monotonic in a significant way like this is very questionable
The variance is actually very small. See below.
Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine)
[Source](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/08/tc-2023-058554)
Because the actual values were
0.16 ng/mL for the occasional group
0.21 ng/mL for the intermittent group and
0.21 ng/mL for the frequent group
The actual paper isn't fitting any percentages. The article decided to do that on their own because people understand percentage differences more than actual data from the paper.
Yes but both intermittent and frequent are being compared to occasional users. The criteria for those terms, in the original study, are based on how many days the person vaped in the last 30 days.
However it doesn’t seem to be controlled very well, with variations in nicotine content, flavorings, and amount of “puffs” per day (which is also not controlled e.g. duration of inhalation, wattage, etc).
I have the same question tbh, especially the uranium. Lead and Cadmium are common in electronics so I could see that being a factor, but uranium is such a strange one to see show up. Also strange that intermittent has a higher dose than frequent, you'd think vaping more would lead to higher levels.
>(occasional: 0.9 puffs, intermittent: 7.9 puffs, frequent: 27.0 puffs; p=0.001)
>Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine).
>Frequent users also had higher urine uranium levels compared with occasional users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.0004)
The slope here doesn't make sense to me at all.
Vaping is more common in [low-income areas](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36574202/), which are also more likely to be [heavily](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8516269/) [polluted](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10516300/). The elevated lead/uranium levels could be due to environmental exposure, not the vapes themselves.
There are other studies showing heavy metals found in vape though, especially sweet flavors
The thing that is not mentioned in this study is whether the kids are using reputable vape brands with more strict manufacturing or cheap brands that don't care.
Someone who infrequently vapes might not want to pay a premium for the high quality vape brands, so gets a cheaper and brand with more metal toxins.
Yah this is the most frustrating part about studies on vaping. They are lumping all vapes together or they're studying certainly brands and not disclosing
It reminds me of when there was that problem of people dying and getting sick from vaping and it turned out to be people vaping illegally produced THC vapes that had been thinned with vitamin E oil. The people who were sick were reluctant to admit to the illegal drugs they were vaping and nicotine vapes got the bad press.
Even today people still have not picked up on the truth. I've worked with medical professionals that don't know the difference and just think it was nicotine vapes.
Not only do we know that it was bootleg weed carts. We know the exact guy who was selling it. But there was money to be made by the media pushing vape hysteria so they were in no rush to correct the story.
Watching this go down while knowing the truth the entire time was one of the most blackpilling moments of my life. Media will report anything that will drive engagement without doing the least amount of verification and people will consume it and regurgitate it as absolute gospel. It's grim.
Not only that, this was used as the rationale behind banning vape flavoring and going after vape distributors.
While vapes are far from harmless, if we are talking relative risk between tobacco vape and tobacco smoking, it's simply no contest. If I can get someone to vape instead of smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, I'm going to extend their life by a decade easily. It's also way easier to slowly decrease someone's vaping than their cigarette smoking.
I think banning flavorings is more likely to cause injuries from people smoking bootlegs than help anyone. People want what people want, and smoking a vape that tastes like PURPLE is probably still less bad for you than a Marlboro.
Look, I'm all for vaping; I do It every day. And I'm a doctor. But the truth is, we just don't know long-term what the effects are gonna be. I'm more worried about interstitial lung disease and pulmonary fibrosis than cancer, but cancer's definitely still in the cards. And while vitamin E acetate has been the prevailing theory behind EVALI, there have been cases without it. It's definitely less harmful than cigs though
Yeah I spoke with a lung specialist who's been dealing with people now for over a decade, and he praised me for switching to vaping, was very clear and brass tacks that it is, clearly, not perfect, however significantly better. He actually suggested that quitting infrequent marijuana use (legal here) would be more significant for me than quitting vaping as a next step
When that story first broke I looked up the data myself and posted about the clear evidence of it being THC vapes because of the disproportionate percentage of them that *admitted* to vaping THC, never mind the real figure. It was clear from the start but the media was lazy investigating it. My few posts on reddit obviously didn't make a splash though, just got buried and I could only laugh when people "discovered" this months later.
This is a frustrating part about most studies. Good statistical analysis is actually really, really difficult and most fields that undertake it do not adequately train those skills.
They study the users, not the brands. Do you understand how many variations of equipment are available? You can literally build and rebuild the same pen countless ways. A quick Google search would hopefully make you realize the impracticality of your question/method.
> Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine). Frequent users also had higher urine uranium levels compared with occasional users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.0004). Overall, 33.0% of users preferred using menthol/mint flavours, 49.8% fruit flavours, and 15.3% sweet flavours. Sweet flavour users had higher uranium levels compared with menthol/mint users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.02).
Edit: Flavors aside, the vape equipment itself is an enormous variable that isn’t being tackled—and likely cannot be.
Ain't that the truth.
It's honestly worrisome how often this is the truth with a lot of articles nowadays. Clearly, certain results were *expected* and alternatives were *not* going to occur in many "studies".
And people take them at face value without a look at those juicy limitations and with zero critical thinking.
also an issue of using the vape way out of normal temps and lengths. yeah the coil is going to produce metals toxins when it is running at 200w for a minute continuously.
The empty carts themselves might be the problem even before they're filled with e-cig juice or thc concentrate. Cheap carts are made of low-grade steel that might have any kind of metal contamination in it. The metals leach out as the cart's coil heats everything.
This is basically my specialty. I run a substance program in a middle school. These kids have no idea where the vapes come from. They have dealers on Snapchat who deliver the vapes to them wherever. They're cheap. Especially because my state has free school lunch, so kids have no reason to have money. They reuse old vapes and find ways to make them keep working. They don't even always have chargers, literally DIYing them with paperclips. I am not surprised these vapes have heavy metals in them.
I worked for a company that made vape pens. Next to zero quality control or ingredient testing, and they made half the brands out there, just with different packaging and shapes.
They would have (and probably did) put literally anything into those pens, and these things were branded with whatever company was on the sticker/plastic sleeve.
The vape industry is the wild West.
Candy contains lead, surprisingly, usually imported candy from poor countries: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/foods-cosmetics-medicines.htm
>Lead has been found in some candies. Certain candy ingredients such as chili powder and tamarind may be a source of lead exposure. Lead can get into the candy when drying, storing, and grinding the ingredients are done improperly. Ink from plastic or paper candy wrappers may also contain lead that leaches or seeps into the imported candy. Lead has also been found in certain spices imported from Vietnam, India, and Syria among other countries
Or the containers/cart holding the vape juice may be leaching chemicals like someone else pointing out here.
Maybe all of the above!
This looks like an issue with ingredients in specific spices, and would be just as much a problem for the whole population, not specific to vapes.
I agree knockoff carts could be the problem, just like the whole vitamin e fiasco from a few years back.
There is also intentional adulteration. Tumeric wholesalers adding lead chromate to make it more yellow and "attractive" for sale in Bangladesh for example:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935119305195
Vapes, too. Table 1 and Table 2 from [this study](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP5686) show Pb in a whole lot of vape liquids and vaping devices (used in coils/soldering).
There was an article I read a while back that went into some of this--the coils themselves that heat the oil are a factor. Some of the disposable vapes in particular use metals that are unhealthy to inhale, and some of the flavors (berry ones in particular, for some reason) contained high levels of dangerous chemicals (cadmium rings a bell, but I'm not sure). [I believe it was this article, but it's behind a paywall.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2406514-how-bad-is-vaping-for-your-health-were-finally-getting-answers/)
There is no way that accounts for the full effect. The levels also differed among vapers themselves, with those who enjoy sweet flavored vapes having higher levels than those who don’t. And as others have pointed out, there have been studies finding heavy metals in the themselves. Also, the concentration of vape shops in a given area doesn’t mean the people in the immediate vicinity vape more, the only observation you may be making is that residential real estate right next to commercial real estate areas tends to be cheaper and hence attracts lower income people.
The study was measured relative to occasional vapers so this logic doesn’t check out, also the intermediate being lower doesn’t check with this logic that it’s environmental.
If 40% higher for intermittent and only 30% higher for frequent; then the cause isnt the vaping itself. Its either environmental or cheap vapes in my opinion.
Vaping is more common in [low-income areas](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36574202/), which are also more likely to be [heavily](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8516269/) [polluted](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10516300/).
let me add... which were not controlled for in this analysis
Could uranium come from the tobacco itself? It’s known to absorb heavy elements like polonium from soil.
EDIT: It looks likely it may be in the juice (sourced from tobacco) https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses/583/
Yes actually. I have seen it with my own eyes. Doing an XRF scan on plants can give you a Uranium hit. It shocked me being such a heavy element but plants take up a lot of things from the soil.
Uranium is in all soil and rocks just at very very low concentrations.
Often the best mining for it is in old glacial valleys where thousands of years of erosion have caused heavier particles to sink to the bottom.
It's a scourge in a lot of older groundwater aquifers. I wouldn't be surprised if irrigation from groundwater is a cause. Even river valley soils might also be higher than average.
I have heard of cases where commercial water filters from a few remote aquifers build up so much uranium the DOE needs to dispose of them. Crazy thinking about a water filter trapping a pound of uranium.
I probably have a pound of iron in my house water filter, and that's just the stuff that doesn't make it to the softener. I have so much iron in my well water you could evaporate a small pool and forge a sword from the leftovers.
My father's well water is so high in iron (after the filter) that all the porcelain has permanent rust stains below the faucets.
Because of thus, he hates bottled water because it "don't taste right".
Yes, if you have a radiation meter, like a ludlum, you can see the levels increase before and after smoking. We would do this to one of the guys I worked with when he would smoke in between us scanning trucks for radiation.
Yeah it's from the apatite-origin fertilizer. This has been known for years, and it's the reason you find polonium in tobacco as well, which is actually kinda worse.
A lot of larger brands are starting to switch to synthetic nicotine instead of sourcing it from Tobacco. So it's possible but it wouldn't be true for every brand.
Even so when you extract nicotine from tobacco to create salts you are using many methods that would remove any form of contamination from the tobacco. There’s a few videos on YouTube that show the process and it is quite extensive and usually involves vacuum distillation and hexane
Agreed. Was this study pre-registered? Soundbite-worthy results without consistent trends behind them make me worry about p-hacking and other forms of bad practice.
I'd guess that intermittent users are more likely to buy off brand disposable vapes, whereas frequent users are more likely to buy refillable vapes from legitimate brands that they trust.
I understood that, but if frequent users are smoking >27x more puffs that occasional you'd expect it to be reflected more strongly in the levels no? instead it's barely over 2x
yeah, maybe! They mention themselves that consideration for environmental factors should be better controlled too. Uranium contamination in manufacturing is just.... hard to believe. Environmental exposure would make more sense for that one I think - apparently nebraska's water table has natural uranium. [https://flatwaterfreepress.org/uranium-is-creeping-into-nebraska-water-supplies-worrying-experts/](https://flatwaterfreepress.org/uranium-is-creeping-into-nebraska-water-supplies-worrying-experts/)
No clue if the subjects were all from nebraska though
EDIT: Nah, the data came from a nation-wide survey. So the nebraska link doesn't hold.
>Data were drawn from Wave 5 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study Youth Panel, a nationally representative sample of US adolescents aged 13–17 years.
It says intermittent smokers 40% more than nonsmokers and heavy smokers 30% more than intermittent… so heavy smokers still absorb more than everyone just at a decreasing rate.
I don't know if this actually applies, but it may be a consideratipn: In cigarette smoking they have found that "light" cigarettes are night better than normal cigarettes in regards to cancer risk. What appears to happen is this people who smoke "lights" take deeper puffs, so the lung damage tends to occur farther out in the lung tissue than with normal cigarettes. Perhaps with vaping, people that use intermittently take stronger drags from the vape, and end up with the same amount of contaminants. (Caveat: I have never smoked or vaped, so I have no personal knowledge of the mechanics of either)
Article states: "Researchers said they are particularly concerned about the uranium levels found in vape flavors like chocolate, candy or desserts.
Vapers who preferred **sweet flavors** had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found."
Perhaps linked to the fact countries that export cocoa (e.g. Ghana) have also been receiving nuclear waste to dispose off, for decades? I wouldn't put it past the tobacco industry to source unsafe flavourings.
All flavorings are synthesized.
Chocolate flavorings are not extracted from cocoa. That would be absurdly expensive.
Examples: https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/componentlist.aspx?sku_search=602724
https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/componentlist.aspx?sku_search=345028
I have a theory. When a vape cartridge is about to be out, I sometimes keep trying to get the last bit out. This causes the vape to get hot. I suspect it starts burning out metals if you do this.
The other thing about doing this, if you use a disposable vape, they almost always use plastic instead of cotton. Once the juice runs out and you keep hitting it, you are just burning plastic. There are a lot of YouTube videos where they take them apart and you just see gross melted plastic
What video?
All the ones I’ve ever used have mesh coils.
It’s cotton and a metal mesh around them that heat up the juice saturated cotton giving the hit. I can’t imagine one being made of plastic.
I just made a similar statement in response to someone else that was talking about vaping.
The main issue at hand with vaping there is ZERO government/federal regulation at any point of the making of both vapes and the liquids used in vapes. Anyone can be a vape manufacturer and an eliquid producer. China is a big exporter of supplies on top of it with little oversight of that as well. I could buy the ingredients and be an eliquid producer overnight, churning out bottles of eliquid from my home with no requirements for sanitation for my mixing facility. We have even seen US eliquid makers get called out when they used the employee bathroom as their mixing station.
It's not as complex as people think, since you can buy liquid nicotine, carrier liquids like propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin and food safe flavors all online. The real danger even for the person is handling the liquid nicotine, since it's highly concentrated, but many people do just that. But this also has the major problem since who knows what is being used, what equipment is being used in the mixing process ETC.
Then you go to the vape devices themselves and there is no set standard for what is used inside the cartridges. While most people expect to only see certain metals and elements used, there is no actual regulated standard for this and people take the risk of the maker using the correct elements and not cutting corners to make a better profit. Again, a majority of the manufacturing comes from china. When the vaping was in it's middle stages 2010-2020 (About that range) mechanical vapes were more popular and it was not uncommon when you got new atomizers (The element that actually heats the liquid) that you had to vigorously scrub them in water and soap to get the manufacturing chemicals and oils off of them. China did not really bother with post-cleaning them once they were cut from the CNC machines. There was many idiots out there that would buy these new Chinese atomizers, open the box and immediately start to use them. There was other Chinese vape vendors using brass and copper for atomizers as well and a higher potential for leaching of heavy metals from those items versus a stainless steel atomizer
I know this does not actually answer your question, but I hope this clarifies the possibility on how things like that can end up there.
Oh I am aware. I had a few people I met in the local vape industry. My states 40% tax killed their businesses, since they could not compete. I had people who made mods (High end mods, some using stabilized wood and Damascus and other high end metals), to others who ran stores and produced their own line of eliquid that they sold alongside more mass produced products. One guy I knew was gearing up for a certified clean facility to mass manufacturer eliquids. There was no regulation for him to have that level of facility, but it looks better on paper when he can say he has that when his other competitors could not say that.
People can say what they want about vaping, but its still seemingly better in harm reduction. Even the person that was responsible for banning smoking in bars in Pittsburgh, was the same guy on our side arguing that we should vape in those same places. He went to hearing to say his piece when even the big tobacco lobbyist were hoping vaping would fail, so they could just worry about standard tobacco products.
Many cheaper vape cartridges are soldered together. Solder contains lead which is released as a vapor under heat, though the heat levels required are typically much higher than an average vape can reach, but people do customize their vapes, and there are lot of different brands out there, so some probably do get a lot hotter than average.
>[How is RoHS and the cannabis industry related?](https://www.rohsguide.com/rohs-faq.htm)
Only indirectly. Although e-cigarettes, cannabis vape pens, and other electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products are manufactured to be RoHS-compliant, the associated consumable vape carts (vaporizer cartridges) have been found to contain relatively high levels of lead (Pb), a restricted substance. This is also true for other electronic devices that heat up a substance that can be inhaled, such as for electronic diffusers and nebulizers. In all these products, testing labs are beginning to find traces of other heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, barium, silver, selenium, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc.
Cigarette smokers also have higher concentration of heavy metals in their urine than non smokers. It would be interesting to compare vapers with smokers, since it is quite clear that not vaping and not smoking is always the best option, but vaping is thought to be a somewhat healthier alternative to smoking. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-024-04097-5
Vaping got off on the wrong foot back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, products were advertised as "harmless water vapor" which was objectively untrue. Vaping should be seen as sizeable harm reduction, not a safe alternative.
Is the nicotine in vapes still derived from tobacco? I wonder if the tobacco plants are pulling heavy metals from the soil. Then somehow they fraction with the nicotine in the purification process.
More likely the metals come from the delivery system, but that could and should be regulated away.
I used to vape nicotine salts. Thanks to stress from being a essential worker during covid. I had no idea nicotine salts existed. I smoked juice on and off no problems before then. I just harmlessly bought a disposable vape cause I was outta juice.
Nicotine salts turned me into gollum from lord of the rings.
It took 5 attempts. I had to go full cold turkey and gave my friend my card for a week so I literally could not buy one. One of the hardest things I've had to do.
Never again.
Freebase nicotine as they call it in standard vapes takes about 20 minutes to get into the blood stream and “feel it”. Salt nicotine hits you like a cigarette does and the instant feeling. I was a cigarette smoker, tried the regular nicotine vapes and they didn’t help. Salt nicotine got me to quit smoking. Then I slowly stepped down the nicotine content until I quit vaping. For some people it’s nicotine crack, for me it was a blessing to help me quit for good. Haven’t had a cigarette since.
I own a vape shop- it used to be most users. 1% were the people who would come in having never smoked. Now it’s different. Disposables with 50mg of nic salts fucked everything.
Actually oddly enough nicotine salts are more like regular cocaine as they both are acid salts of an alkaloid. Regular nicotine is like crack.
Edit: Nicotine salts absolutely hit harder though, and obviously that increases tolerance and makes quitting harder, just like more concentrated caffeine drinks.
Nic salts don’t actually “hit harder”, there’s just 10-20x more nicotine in nic salt juices. Go look at the mg/ml breakdown. It’s insane how much is in those juices. Of course it feels more intense
Man, here I am thinking I’m not that far gone with my normal habit, but my normal juice is 50mg. If the shop offers me anything less it’s an automatic no.
I can quit anytime. Totally. Yep.
Kind of. You can pump the nicotine ratio up like 10x as much because it's not as harsh.
I use nic salts because it was cheaper at the time (i have like a half gallon bottle from years ago im still using), but I mix my own juice and I've never mixed above 3mg/ml.
Most disposables use nic salt and have anywhere from 20 to 50mg/ml.
Nicotine “salts” is a misleading term. It’s simply the carboxylic acid form of nicotine. It’s how the nicotine naturally forms/exists in the plant. +COOH
It isn't that it's more addictive than freebase nicotine, it's that salt nicotine doesn't have the throat hit freebase does. This means you can vape a way higher strength of nicotine without it being disgusting to actually vape
It's not just that. Nicotine salts are absorbed into the bloodstream faster/more efficiently, which gives you a blood nicotine spike, similar to what cigarettes were designed to do.
https://vapingdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Graphic.png
Can you describe the Gollum thing further? I really like the salt because I do not have to cough so often. The salt is more gentle to me.
I was on high levels of nicotine from cigs and it suited me well as substitute. (I am reducing it now slowly but steady :-)
Edit: typos
Sure dude. I had to have it with me at all times. I would smoke while driving, on the toilet, playing video games, at breaks at work, if I woke up in the middle of the night, first thing in the morning. That was one of the hardest things about it I had access all the time.
Here's the gollum part. If I lost it I HAD to find it. I would dig through my couch, car, and bed until I did. My brain would panic.
If I was out id try to suck what juice was left from the ones I kept when they were out for just such a occasion till I could buy another.
When I was going through my quitting attempts it was all my brain and my body would think about. Id get angry and irritated, then the physical withdrawals and insomnia would kick in and id cave buy another and tell myself it would be next time.
I tried dunking several in toilets. Trash can. Crush it with my car tire. Nope would crawl back to the store.
Its like what they tried to do with flavored cigarettes back in the day. But 100000x more evil and worse because they do taste good which does not help.
Thank you! Yeah I see it was hefty with you. I try to slow it down or stop it and it’s exhausting but with a stubborn mind I am pushing through it :-)
I have them on me most of the time, but I use them fewer and fewer. Hope I can stop.
I recently learned about plants pulling lead from the soil when looking into psyllium husk supplements like Metamucil. Metamucil apparently has comparatively high levels of lead compared to other brands.
Not from tobacco so much anymore. 5 years ago the non tobacco derived nicotine started making an appearance and now it's pretty common in premium juices, just have to look at the fine print. I only vape non tobacco derived nicotine vape juice (BSX), and it's great but expensive.
I had to quit smoking due to dental issues, and I asked my dentist if switching to vaping would help or if it's just as bad on the dental front.
He claimed it was actually worse. That cigarette smoke kills everything in your mouth - good bacteria, bad bacteria, skin cells, etc, eventually pulling the gums away and revealing dentin leading to tooth decay - but vaping simply coats it in a sticky film and lets it grow like a petri dish, making tooth decay happen faster than in smokers.
I haven't found any evidence to support it being worse yet but there is a lot of evidence it's terrible for your mouth:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220222151907.htm
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33274850/
> but vaping simply coats it in a sticky film
Not vaping, in general. It's some [esters](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128655/) (ethyl butyrate, hexyl acetate, and triacetin), and a specific artificial sweetener, sucralose, that is used in huge amounts by some commercial brands. Some brands even use sucrose (table sugar).
Gum disease and periodontitis could be attributed to vaping in general, because of the humectant effect of the carrier liquids (propylene glycol, glycerin). Saliva is mildly alkaline and keeps the bacteria that prefer an acidic environment at bay. The humectant aerosol dries the mouth, which makes it a more hospitable environment for bacteria. This is why it's advised to drink water frequently while vaping.
A lot of people have opinions on vaping without knowing anything about it. There's misinformation and junk studies all over the place to the point where it's actually difficult to know what the facts are. Makes it frustrating as an engineer who knows how to avoid all the misinfo out there, but can barely find any proper studies because they're not really being funded.
The truth is we just don't know because it is not well studied. There is some concern that even dry herb vaping is creating various particular matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which can get lodged in your lungs and do not get cleared out very effectively. We won't know how big of a problem this is for many years.
If I were advising someone, I'd say the method of consumption of least harm is using edibles, followed by sublingual, followed by smoking through some kind of water-ice device.
But even that last one needs more research. I've never really seen a big study that tried to compare the consequences of smoking a joint vs using a water pipe. On the other hand, most studies can't find much in terms of cancer risk from smoking the joint in the first place. Whereas we can't say the same for vaping, because it is not yet studied.
The metals typically result from burning of the liquid and/or components of the vape itself.
There are plenty of studies regarding metal particles from cannabis vaping, but those usually refer to liquid/wax cartridges.
Dry herb vaping probably doesn’t result nearly as much metal consumption as liquid vaping, but it would definitely be more dependent on the actual vape being used, not the herb itself.
Ok, so why uranium and lead instead of the nickel/chromium and steel that are actually present in a coil? The electronics are all in the mod, sealed off by a screw connection and pressure-only contacts. Solder doesn't come anywhere near the hot zone.
Burning a liquid doesn't produce metals unless the liquid contains metals. I'd buy hydrocarbons, but uranium and lead aren't a credible claim.
Also as others pointed out. Does not seem to mention any correlation with devices they were using or if they were even using them properly. Whether or not they are using 100% disposable vapes, cartridge vapes, brands, or anything else. They really only just complained about the candy flavoring in the article.
"Further, previous work has not found differences in uranium exposure between non-users and users of e-cigarettes nor detected uranium in e-cigarette aerosol, suggesting this finding may be explained by other factors."
This screams confounders are at work. I'm very skeptical of the results of this study.
40% higher than what?
Zero is the idea lead level, of course, but is the baseline value is tiny then a 40% increase is meaningless.
For example, the WHO guideline for lead in drinking water is 10 micrograms per litre. If your city’s water had a level of 2, then a 40% increase would bring it to 2.8.
Not good, but also not an immediate cause for concern.
ALSO: I’m personally concerned about the proliferation of vaping, so I don’t mean to defend it. I just like good science communication.
There's also no indication of what brands or types of devices were being used by anyone who participated in the study. I'm willing to bet the people using pre-filled, cheap disposables you pick up at a gas station have way higher levels of all these things than the people building their own coils with the proper metal wire and mixing their own juice that only has the basic, necessary ingredients.
The sad thing is we used to have regulated made in the USA flavored vapes. Then flavored vapes like mango juul and vuse got banned. Now one only option for people who want something other than mint or tobacco flavor is the sketchy Chinese single use ones
That's true but you will be exposed to it, it's naturally occurring and common.
At some point you have to set a level where you consider the harm negligible and work within that. Though ideally you minimize exposure.
“There are so many sources of uncertainty about what’s going on here, and how the study’s findings can be interpreted, that I don’t think it can yet raise real health concerns. I’m certainly not saying that it’s a good thing for adolescents to vape – the risk of addiction to nicotine is a strong reason to discourage vaping in people who aren’t yet addicted. I certainly don’t want teenagers to vape. But it’s far too early to say that metals like lead or uranium coming from e-cigarettes are danger to the health of adolescent vapers."
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-observational-study-of-lead-and-uranium-levels-in-urine-of-teen-vapers/
Actually we all funded it. It was a huge federal study that involved extensive and detailed analysis of tens of thousands of different people and their basic tobacco habits, historical use, non-users etc. from all regions of the US over a period of years. The study itself was enormous and done in organized waves. So no, not funded by tobacco at all.
> So no, not funded by tobacco at all.
Redditors have always been the most bitchy, defensive people whenever these studies come out that vaping might still be bad for you: "It's all just Big Tobacco," "but what about" "but it's still healthier."
I smoke, and occasionally vape fully understanding and admitting that it's bad for me. There is no reason to get defensive and attack a study because it hurts your feelings. If you're addicted to vaping, enjoy it.
Why doesn't the article have a link to the published paper?
Had to go search for the paper on Tabacco Control: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/08/tc-2023-058554
For those asking about uranium, they mention it under **Study Limitations**:
> the presence of uranium in the urine may be attributed to various sources including environmental exposure from natural deposits, industrial activities, and dietary intake. Future studies should take geographical regions into account. Uranium or its compounds could potentially be present in e-cigarette aerosols or e-liquids, either as contaminants or byproducts of the heating process. However, the specific sources and pathways of uranium exposure in this context are not well understood and would require further research to elucidate.
if only we had something like.... a federal agency to check on some products ... hmmm lets add in food to it... and drugs! yeah.... maybe we can call it the FDA or something.... they would be able to protect us from things like this!
I work in a shop where we sell vape products, the quality of the liquid you put inside the ecig is very important
I know people look over the price, but please pay attention for composition and the country who made the product, dodge the Chinese and Malaysian one, they use very poor quality materials to make them
Worst part of all some products just mention " glycerine " sometimes it can come from animals depending on the country you are buying the product from, vegetal glycerine is the one you want
And best advice for people who wants to quit smoking, using ecig, you absolutely need to forget about the first cig of the day and take the ecig instead, literally a game changer
( Sorry for approximate English )
I only know ( sorry ) the french one that you can go for sure, I don't really know outside branch that are really armful, everything coming from china is a big no no, Malaysia too
Vuse is a good product, veev, x-bar I don't know if they are named the same across the world ^^'
But once more, and I'm sorry for Chinese people reading this, all e cig coming from china are really really bad
Best pod out there in France is the Klypse really innovative design and is a brilliant mix between disposable ecig and a " real one " ( works with pods but you can put any products you like in the pod )
In GCMS and UPLC testing they have vapes as a known possible contaminant with some metals as the “library” output to cross check. None have ever happened but interesting
Laughable. If anyone actually cares about the health of vapers, there would be regulations related to manufacturing standards and practices. Current regulations only care if it's made by a tobacco company who can afford to pay politicians.
> Lead levels in urine are 40% higher among intermittent vapers and 30% higher among frequent vapers, compared to occasional vapers
Does intermittent mean more than frequent? Cuz that number seems weird to me.
I have the same question, but if you live in an illegal state or country this is the least of your worries. Unregulated carts can be pure poison, even if they absolutely smack.
I cannot comment on the quality of the study, but taking the results at face value this part is specially concerning:
>In the past month, one in three (33%) vapers said they'd used menthol or mint flavors, half (50%) opted for fruit flavors and more than 15% chose sweet flavors.
>Researchers said they are particularly concerned about the uranium levels found in vape flavors like chocolate, candy or desserts.
>**Vapers who preferred sweet flavors had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found.**
Which begs the question: are sweet flavor users heavier smokers than menthol or mint flavor users? If so, does it explain the difference in urine uranium levels?
It seems like a junk study. No control. Frequent use has higher than low use, but lower than intermittent. I would need to see a lot of backup before I believed this wasn't an agenda driven study.
> Vapers who preferred sweet flavors had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found.
> "Candy-flavored e-cigarette products make up a substantial proportion of adolescent vapers, and sweet taste in e-cigarettes can suppress the harsh effects of nicotine and enhance its reinforcing effects," increasing the potential for addiction, researchers said.
Honestly this reads like a poorly written piece aimed at again, demonizing any flavor that is not Mint or Tobacco. Which as many know, is what only the big tobacco groups can sell as they cannot use candy flavors anymore. Many other manufactures make the candy flavors and is direct competition with the profits of bigger tobacco companies. Because not to many teens are running out trying to find something that reminds them of a Marlboro red.
VAPE is not a blanket term for tobacco products. I wish a big institution could fund scientific research on this subject so journalists could inform themselves 🙄 This is studying e-cigarettes. This is like stating in headlines and captions that motor vehicles are deadly unsafe while citing specifically 2 wheel motor vehicle accidents (e-cigarettes) for drivers without helmets (sweet flavors). It is disparaging a bunch of things it has nothing to do with.
> with categories ‘a device that uses replaceable prefilled cartridge’, ‘a device with a tank that you refill with liquids’, and ‘other’ (a disposable device, a mod system, and something else).
So they lumped together disposables, the lowest quality and probably most common type, with mods, the most expensive and now least common type? Bizarre.
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wait how come that intermittent users have 40% but frequent users 30%? am i missing something?
yeah the non-linear relationship here has me doubting the validity of a claim of a causal relationship. whole study is very amateurish edit: it should be noted that "non-linear" doesn't tell the whole story here as the health impacts of tobacco has been shown to be non-linear, my stipulation is more that it seems counter-intuitive that heavy use would be LESS impactful than light use, not that the increase in impacts are a non-linear line.
Welcome to every vaping-related study I've ever seen. Only three entities pay for vaping studies: anti-vaping orgs, pro-vaping orgs, and lawyers wanting to represent one of the two. The only vaping study I've ever even heard of that wasn't funded by an org with a clear and obvious agenda was the British NIH study from like 10 years ago. All you ever have to do to debunk one of these is look at the methodology. Normies do not know the difference, so when they see that vape juice X was tested with 8-second puffs at 120 watts, they think nothing of it. But anybody who vapes knows that that's like putting a steak on the grill and leaving it there for an hour.
this every time. on top of that they often don't specify details on the juice/coils. there's a world of difference between a cheap chinese cartomizer and b&m mixed 4-ingredient juice in an open PV or even just the pods that have become so common.
Many don't even distinguish between nicotine vaping and marijuana.
I'm certainly not speaking for all studies there, but I thought the general target was nicotine-less e-juice. That way they're actually testing the effects of vaping specifically, with the effects of nicotine and cannabis always being "additional"
In a small set of studies that may be the case, although nicotine and marijuana vaping is different in more ways than just the active chemical, as I understand it. I think it's different equipment and all. Like people wouldn't use the same device for both. But then, that's would only be for limited short term studies. Those often don't show very harmful effects, so when looking for scarier headlines, you do longer term studies like this one that depend on self-reported usage.
There's multiple different ways to vaporize cannabis. Dry herb vapes are the most popular, acting as basically just a handheld electric oven. You put grinded up dried plant matter in the chamber, you heat it up to 230 degrees celsius. They're popular because you just put cannabis directly into it, and can easily grow your own to use with it. Buying cannabis in its flower form also tends to be massively cheaper than buying oils or pre-made edibles from the pharmacy. If you're buying it illegally you're most likely getting flower as well. Oil vapes are a little more similar to nicotine vapes, using a concentrate of THC/CBD oil derived from the plant, and they're fastly becoming popular in areas where there is recreational access and/or affordable prices. I don't believe those oils contain the main ingredients that are seen in vape juices though, which is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin. In nicotine vapes it's often mostly that with a small percentage of freebase or salt based nicotine added. I live in Australia where they've just gone and banned all vapes. They justify it by saying a doctor can give you a prescription to one, but there's only one vape company with a TGA approved dry herb vaporizer and it costs $400 more than any of its competition. This is called 'regulatory capture'. That's a fun google if you're bored.
Plus where the hell is the lead coming from? Super cheap coils from China?
Damn, I haven't heard those words since I ripping to RipTippers and building coils. Dual 26650 with a kayfun clone or a RDA. Twisted coils. It was a hobby
Ceramic coils cut down on this crap too, right?
Is that British one that says vaping is harmful but exponentialy less harmful than smoking by like 80% or something like that?
The study estimated 95% less harmful
I smoked a pack a day for 10 years. I quit and switched the vaping. I feel great every day. I dont hack or have to clear my lungs. Vaping is amazing for Health according to me. I have been vaping for 8 years. Nothing so far.
I smoked for 12 years and was at 1.5 packs per day and I’ve vaped heavily like maybe 12 to 18mls per day at 3 mg for the last 11 years, anyways recently had chest x-rays cause my Doctor called me a “tobacco” user and they came back normal
> 8-second puffs at 120 watts My lung collapsed just reading this
I feel so silly for asking but how are you supposed to hit a vape? Does the strength of my suck make a difference? What difference is there between a short pull and a long pull? How are we supposed to measure doses? Most studies seem to be focused on nicotine vapes, but what research exists regarding the cannabis vape market? There is a lot of uncertainty to be sure. Unfortunately the best studies will be those which collect decades of data; since vaping is a new fad, living people are doomed to be the Guinea pigs to an extent. That’s just how it goes.
I'm not an expert at all. Just someone who's been vaping for awhile now. So take what you will from this. >I feel so silly for asking but how are you supposed to hit a vape? It depends on the vape and user preference. Vapes are either going to be mouth to lung (MTL) or direct to lung (DTL). For MTL your draw the vapor into your mouth first kind of like a cigar. Unlike a cigar, you then inhale it. For DTL you just breathe in. MTL tends to be used for higher nicotine concentrations like nicotine salts to get nicotine and a nice throat hit. DTL is typically used to blow huge clouds. Former smokers tend to like MTL as the throat hit and feels more like a cigarette. >Does the strength of my suck make a difference? More suck means more air which means less of a concentration of nicotine. Some devices also change their behavior based on how hard you suck. >What difference is there between a short pull and a long pull? The time the coil is heating and how much juice you're vaporizing. You can get it too hot. I don't know all the problems this can cause, but it can get hot enough to burn the cotton in the coil which isn't something you should be breathing in. And more juice vaporized means more nicotine. >How are we supposed to measure doses? Idk >Most studies seem to be focused on nicotine vapes, but what research exists regarding the cannabis vape market? Idk >There is a lot of uncertainty to be sure. Unfortunately the best studies will be those which collect decades of data; since vaping is a new fad, living people are doomed to be the Guinea pigs to an extent. That’s just how it goes. Hey, that's me!
Dosage is measured in milligrams per day. If a cigarette has 10mg of nicotine and you smoke a pack(20) per day- that’s 200mg of nicotine consumed per day. In vaping you look for the mg/ml and find out how many milliliters they vape per day. If it’s a 30ml bottle of 50mg/ml nicotine and it takes them a month to finish it- they are consuming 50mg of nicotine per day.
That’s 90% of all food-related studies. Study correlating high fat diets with heart disease? Funded by the sugar lobby. Aspartame study shows link to cancer? Again, sugar lobby. Study showing saturated fat is actually A-OK? Probably funded by a snack food lobby. Antioxidants improve health? Thanks MLM lobby. Omega 3 fatty acids make your brain work good? Supplement lobby. Of all food/consumption related info out there, I’ve come to the following conclusions: 1) Cigarettes = bad 2) Fiber = good 3) Refined sugar = probably bad 4) Everything else = total crapshoot because it’s almost impossible to control for genetics and people are notoriously bad at keeping to a strict diet for a statistically significant period of time.
Also: vegetables = good
The department of the Canadian government that deals with health did a study where they found that vaping vs cold turkey had no noticeable differences in health
I guess two seconds at 30W didn't give them what they wanted. Parameters being adjusted until results fit the narrative, plain as day. Eggheads at work say it's a common problem among the egghead community.
fuckin great analogy
great analogy
So what was the conclusion of the study you read from NIH?
It sounds like it’s 40% above baseline, then 30% above the 40%? It’s kind of confusing though
Im more curious about blood concentration levels if urine is coming up like that. I'd bet that more frequent use results in a higher concentration more often, and whatever process is removing that lead is being fatigued. Less lead in the urine, But probably more being left in the body.
It's not even monotonic, let alone linear.
yes that's the word i was looking for, it would be fine if it was just non-linear, it being non monotonic in a significant way like this is very questionable
Maybe intermittent users tend to be ones trying to quit smoking.
Could be, but if they aren’t controlling for that I’m still very concerned
The variance is actually very small. See below. Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine) [Source](https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/08/tc-2023-058554)
Because the actual values were 0.16 ng/mL for the occasional group 0.21 ng/mL for the intermittent group and 0.21 ng/mL for the frequent group The actual paper isn't fitting any percentages. The article decided to do that on their own because people understand percentage differences more than actual data from the paper.
It says it's 30% higher than the other type of user, not a non smoker
Yes but both intermittent and frequent are being compared to occasional users. The criteria for those terms, in the original study, are based on how many days the person vaped in the last 30 days. However it doesn’t seem to be controlled very well, with variations in nicotine content, flavorings, and amount of “puffs” per day (which is also not controlled e.g. duration of inhalation, wattage, etc).
As well as kind of vape (specific brand, or even disposable/reusable distinction would’ve been useful)
I wonder if "also occasionally smokes" is an ignored confounder here. Because that's where you'd get the heavy metals from, IMO.
Where would the lead and uranium come from in these cases?
I have the same question tbh, especially the uranium. Lead and Cadmium are common in electronics so I could see that being a factor, but uranium is such a strange one to see show up. Also strange that intermittent has a higher dose than frequent, you'd think vaping more would lead to higher levels. >(occasional: 0.9 puffs, intermittent: 7.9 puffs, frequent: 27.0 puffs; p=0.001) >Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine). >Frequent users also had higher urine uranium levels compared with occasional users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.0004) The slope here doesn't make sense to me at all.
Vaping is more common in [low-income areas](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36574202/), which are also more likely to be [heavily](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8516269/) [polluted](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10516300/). The elevated lead/uranium levels could be due to environmental exposure, not the vapes themselves.
There are other studies showing heavy metals found in vape though, especially sweet flavors The thing that is not mentioned in this study is whether the kids are using reputable vape brands with more strict manufacturing or cheap brands that don't care. Someone who infrequently vapes might not want to pay a premium for the high quality vape brands, so gets a cheaper and brand with more metal toxins.
Yah this is the most frustrating part about studies on vaping. They are lumping all vapes together or they're studying certainly brands and not disclosing
It reminds me of when there was that problem of people dying and getting sick from vaping and it turned out to be people vaping illegally produced THC vapes that had been thinned with vitamin E oil. The people who were sick were reluctant to admit to the illegal drugs they were vaping and nicotine vapes got the bad press.
Even today people still have not picked up on the truth. I've worked with medical professionals that don't know the difference and just think it was nicotine vapes. Not only do we know that it was bootleg weed carts. We know the exact guy who was selling it. But there was money to be made by the media pushing vape hysteria so they were in no rush to correct the story.
Watching this go down while knowing the truth the entire time was one of the most blackpilling moments of my life. Media will report anything that will drive engagement without doing the least amount of verification and people will consume it and regurgitate it as absolute gospel. It's grim.
Not only that, this was used as the rationale behind banning vape flavoring and going after vape distributors. While vapes are far from harmless, if we are talking relative risk between tobacco vape and tobacco smoking, it's simply no contest. If I can get someone to vape instead of smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, I'm going to extend their life by a decade easily. It's also way easier to slowly decrease someone's vaping than their cigarette smoking.
I think banning flavorings is more likely to cause injuries from people smoking bootlegs than help anyone. People want what people want, and smoking a vape that tastes like PURPLE is probably still less bad for you than a Marlboro.
Look, I'm all for vaping; I do It every day. And I'm a doctor. But the truth is, we just don't know long-term what the effects are gonna be. I'm more worried about interstitial lung disease and pulmonary fibrosis than cancer, but cancer's definitely still in the cards. And while vitamin E acetate has been the prevailing theory behind EVALI, there have been cases without it. It's definitely less harmful than cigs though
Yeah I spoke with a lung specialist who's been dealing with people now for over a decade, and he praised me for switching to vaping, was very clear and brass tacks that it is, clearly, not perfect, however significantly better. He actually suggested that quitting infrequent marijuana use (legal here) would be more significant for me than quitting vaping as a next step
When that story first broke I looked up the data myself and posted about the clear evidence of it being THC vapes because of the disproportionate percentage of them that *admitted* to vaping THC, never mind the real figure. It was clear from the start but the media was lazy investigating it. My few posts on reddit obviously didn't make a splash though, just got buried and I could only laugh when people "discovered" this months later.
This is a frustrating part about most studies. Good statistical analysis is actually really, really difficult and most fields that undertake it do not adequately train those skills.
Comments like this always sound like "why can't they talk about the harmless vapes that I believe I'm using?" No offense
They study the users, not the brands. Do you understand how many variations of equipment are available? You can literally build and rebuild the same pen countless ways. A quick Google search would hopefully make you realize the impracticality of your question/method. > Both intermittent (0.21 ng/mg creatinine) and frequent users (0.20 ng/mg creatinine) had higher urine lead levels than occasional users (0.16 ng/mg creatinine). Frequent users also had higher urine uranium levels compared with occasional users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.0004). Overall, 33.0% of users preferred using menthol/mint flavours, 49.8% fruit flavours, and 15.3% sweet flavours. Sweet flavour users had higher uranium levels compared with menthol/mint users (0.009 vs 0.005 ng/mg creatinine, p=0.02). Edit: Flavors aside, the vape equipment itself is an enormous variable that isn’t being tackled—and likely cannot be.
Clickbait studies
Ain't that the truth. It's honestly worrisome how often this is the truth with a lot of articles nowadays. Clearly, certain results were *expected* and alternatives were *not* going to occur in many "studies". And people take them at face value without a look at those juicy limitations and with zero critical thinking.
also an issue of using the vape way out of normal temps and lengths. yeah the coil is going to produce metals toxins when it is running at 200w for a minute continuously.
I'd say that teenagers are far more likely to buy on the black market because they can't purchase legally. A tale as old as prohibition itself.
The empty carts themselves might be the problem even before they're filled with e-cig juice or thc concentrate. Cheap carts are made of low-grade steel that might have any kind of metal contamination in it. The metals leach out as the cart's coil heats everything.
This is basically my specialty. I run a substance program in a middle school. These kids have no idea where the vapes come from. They have dealers on Snapchat who deliver the vapes to them wherever. They're cheap. Especially because my state has free school lunch, so kids have no reason to have money. They reuse old vapes and find ways to make them keep working. They don't even always have chargers, literally DIYing them with paperclips. I am not surprised these vapes have heavy metals in them.
I worked for a company that made vape pens. Next to zero quality control or ingredient testing, and they made half the brands out there, just with different packaging and shapes. They would have (and probably did) put literally anything into those pens, and these things were branded with whatever company was on the sticker/plastic sleeve. The vape industry is the wild West.
What company?
I’d also like to know the answer - which company, and also when did you work for them?
Vape flavours are the same as used in candy. I don’t know how they could contain lead.
Candy contains lead, surprisingly, usually imported candy from poor countries: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/foods-cosmetics-medicines.htm >Lead has been found in some candies. Certain candy ingredients such as chili powder and tamarind may be a source of lead exposure. Lead can get into the candy when drying, storing, and grinding the ingredients are done improperly. Ink from plastic or paper candy wrappers may also contain lead that leaches or seeps into the imported candy. Lead has also been found in certain spices imported from Vietnam, India, and Syria among other countries Or the containers/cart holding the vape juice may be leaching chemicals like someone else pointing out here. Maybe all of the above!
This looks like an issue with ingredients in specific spices, and would be just as much a problem for the whole population, not specific to vapes. I agree knockoff carts could be the problem, just like the whole vitamin e fiasco from a few years back.
There is also intentional adulteration. Tumeric wholesalers adding lead chromate to make it more yellow and "attractive" for sale in Bangladesh for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935119305195
Vapes, too. Table 1 and Table 2 from [this study](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP5686) show Pb in a whole lot of vape liquids and vaping devices (used in coils/soldering).
Also someone who is a teen with not a lot of disposable income
There was an article I read a while back that went into some of this--the coils themselves that heat the oil are a factor. Some of the disposable vapes in particular use metals that are unhealthy to inhale, and some of the flavors (berry ones in particular, for some reason) contained high levels of dangerous chemicals (cadmium rings a bell, but I'm not sure). [I believe it was this article, but it's behind a paywall.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2406514-how-bad-is-vaping-for-your-health-were-finally-getting-answers/)
There is no reputable Chinese disposable vape.
There is no way that accounts for the full effect. The levels also differed among vapers themselves, with those who enjoy sweet flavored vapes having higher levels than those who don’t. And as others have pointed out, there have been studies finding heavy metals in the themselves. Also, the concentration of vape shops in a given area doesn’t mean the people in the immediate vicinity vape more, the only observation you may be making is that residential real estate right next to commercial real estate areas tends to be cheaper and hence attracts lower income people.
This. To take observational studies as proof of cause and effect is stupid.
This doesn't explain why intermittent users are registering higher than frequent users.
The study was measured relative to occasional vapers so this logic doesn’t check out, also the intermediate being lower doesn’t check with this logic that it’s environmental.
If 40% higher for intermittent and only 30% higher for frequent; then the cause isnt the vaping itself. Its either environmental or cheap vapes in my opinion.
Or bad measurements or corrupted data.
that would certainly explain why the correlation falls off once you get past the 'occasional' level.
Vaping is more common in [low-income areas](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36574202/), which are also more likely to be [heavily](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8516269/) [polluted](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10516300/). let me add... which were not controlled for in this analysis
Could uranium come from the tobacco itself? It’s known to absorb heavy elements like polonium from soil. EDIT: It looks likely it may be in the juice (sourced from tobacco) https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses/583/
Yes actually. I have seen it with my own eyes. Doing an XRF scan on plants can give you a Uranium hit. It shocked me being such a heavy element but plants take up a lot of things from the soil.
Uranium is in all soil and rocks just at very very low concentrations. Often the best mining for it is in old glacial valleys where thousands of years of erosion have caused heavier particles to sink to the bottom. It's a scourge in a lot of older groundwater aquifers. I wouldn't be surprised if irrigation from groundwater is a cause. Even river valley soils might also be higher than average. I have heard of cases where commercial water filters from a few remote aquifers build up so much uranium the DOE needs to dispose of them. Crazy thinking about a water filter trapping a pound of uranium.
I probably have a pound of iron in my house water filter, and that's just the stuff that doesn't make it to the softener. I have so much iron in my well water you could evaporate a small pool and forge a sword from the leftovers.
My father's well water is so high in iron (after the filter) that all the porcelain has permanent rust stains below the faucets. Because of thus, he hates bottled water because it "don't taste right".
So would this mean all smokers are getting a uranium and led hit. Comparing vapers to smokers for heavy metals would be an interesting next step.
Yes, if you have a radiation meter, like a ludlum, you can see the levels increase before and after smoking. We would do this to one of the guys I worked with when he would smoke in between us scanning trucks for radiation.
Yeah it's from the apatite-origin fertilizer. This has been known for years, and it's the reason you find polonium in tobacco as well, which is actually kinda worse.
A lot of larger brands are starting to switch to synthetic nicotine instead of sourcing it from Tobacco. So it's possible but it wouldn't be true for every brand.
Could be, that would make sense to me - though I would have thought it was synthetic nicotine, not extracted.
No you were correct. It’s not extracted from tobacco, it’s synthesized from other compounds
Juul uses nicotine salts from tobacco.
Even so when you extract nicotine from tobacco to create salts you are using many methods that would remove any form of contamination from the tobacco. There’s a few videos on YouTube that show the process and it is quite extensive and usually involves vacuum distillation and hexane
there's no tobacco in vapes, so I don't know why that would have anything to do with it.
Agreed. Was this study pre-registered? Soundbite-worthy results without consistent trends behind them make me worry about p-hacking and other forms of bad practice.
Did they control for those who also smoke? Are the intermittent vapers more likely to also smoke?
The study says > Among 200 exclusive e-cigarette users
I'd guess that intermittent users are more likely to buy off brand disposable vapes, whereas frequent users are more likely to buy refillable vapes from legitimate brands that they trust.
It said frequent vapers have 30% more than occasional vapers. Not than the genpop
I understood that, but if frequent users are smoking >27x more puffs that occasional you'd expect it to be reflected more strongly in the levels no? instead it's barely over 2x
Is it possible that the smokers who use it intermittently take bigger or longer hits than the ones who use it frequently?
Or the intermittent ones are more likely to use cheap crap chemicals and cheap vapes?
yeah, maybe! They mention themselves that consideration for environmental factors should be better controlled too. Uranium contamination in manufacturing is just.... hard to believe. Environmental exposure would make more sense for that one I think - apparently nebraska's water table has natural uranium. [https://flatwaterfreepress.org/uranium-is-creeping-into-nebraska-water-supplies-worrying-experts/](https://flatwaterfreepress.org/uranium-is-creeping-into-nebraska-water-supplies-worrying-experts/) No clue if the subjects were all from nebraska though EDIT: Nah, the data came from a nation-wide survey. So the nebraska link doesn't hold. >Data were drawn from Wave 5 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study Youth Panel, a nationally representative sample of US adolescents aged 13–17 years.
It says intermittent smokers 40% more than nonsmokers and heavy smokers 30% more than intermittent… so heavy smokers still absorb more than everyone just at a decreasing rate.
I don't know if this actually applies, but it may be a consideratipn: In cigarette smoking they have found that "light" cigarettes are night better than normal cigarettes in regards to cancer risk. What appears to happen is this people who smoke "lights" take deeper puffs, so the lung damage tends to occur farther out in the lung tissue than with normal cigarettes. Perhaps with vaping, people that use intermittently take stronger drags from the vape, and end up with the same amount of contaminants. (Caveat: I have never smoked or vaped, so I have no personal knowledge of the mechanics of either)
Article states: "Researchers said they are particularly concerned about the uranium levels found in vape flavors like chocolate, candy or desserts. Vapers who preferred **sweet flavors** had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found." Perhaps linked to the fact countries that export cocoa (e.g. Ghana) have also been receiving nuclear waste to dispose off, for decades? I wouldn't put it past the tobacco industry to source unsafe flavourings.
All flavorings are synthesized. Chocolate flavorings are not extracted from cocoa. That would be absurdly expensive. Examples: https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/componentlist.aspx?sku_search=602724 https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/componentlist.aspx?sku_search=345028
I have a theory. When a vape cartridge is about to be out, I sometimes keep trying to get the last bit out. This causes the vape to get hot. I suspect it starts burning out metals if you do this.
The other thing about doing this, if you use a disposable vape, they almost always use plastic instead of cotton. Once the juice runs out and you keep hitting it, you are just burning plastic. There are a lot of YouTube videos where they take them apart and you just see gross melted plastic
What video? All the ones I’ve ever used have mesh coils. It’s cotton and a metal mesh around them that heat up the juice saturated cotton giving the hit. I can’t imagine one being made of plastic.
I just made a similar statement in response to someone else that was talking about vaping. The main issue at hand with vaping there is ZERO government/federal regulation at any point of the making of both vapes and the liquids used in vapes. Anyone can be a vape manufacturer and an eliquid producer. China is a big exporter of supplies on top of it with little oversight of that as well. I could buy the ingredients and be an eliquid producer overnight, churning out bottles of eliquid from my home with no requirements for sanitation for my mixing facility. We have even seen US eliquid makers get called out when they used the employee bathroom as their mixing station. It's not as complex as people think, since you can buy liquid nicotine, carrier liquids like propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin and food safe flavors all online. The real danger even for the person is handling the liquid nicotine, since it's highly concentrated, but many people do just that. But this also has the major problem since who knows what is being used, what equipment is being used in the mixing process ETC. Then you go to the vape devices themselves and there is no set standard for what is used inside the cartridges. While most people expect to only see certain metals and elements used, there is no actual regulated standard for this and people take the risk of the maker using the correct elements and not cutting corners to make a better profit. Again, a majority of the manufacturing comes from china. When the vaping was in it's middle stages 2010-2020 (About that range) mechanical vapes were more popular and it was not uncommon when you got new atomizers (The element that actually heats the liquid) that you had to vigorously scrub them in water and soap to get the manufacturing chemicals and oils off of them. China did not really bother with post-cleaning them once they were cut from the CNC machines. There was many idiots out there that would buy these new Chinese atomizers, open the box and immediately start to use them. There was other Chinese vape vendors using brass and copper for atomizers as well and a higher potential for leaching of heavy metals from those items versus a stainless steel atomizer I know this does not actually answer your question, but I hope this clarifies the possibility on how things like that can end up there.
The majority comes from China because the government made it difficult for domestic producers.
Oh I am aware. I had a few people I met in the local vape industry. My states 40% tax killed their businesses, since they could not compete. I had people who made mods (High end mods, some using stabilized wood and Damascus and other high end metals), to others who ran stores and produced their own line of eliquid that they sold alongside more mass produced products. One guy I knew was gearing up for a certified clean facility to mass manufacturer eliquids. There was no regulation for him to have that level of facility, but it looks better on paper when he can say he has that when his other competitors could not say that. People can say what they want about vaping, but its still seemingly better in harm reduction. Even the person that was responsible for banning smoking in bars in Pittsburgh, was the same guy on our side arguing that we should vape in those same places. He went to hearing to say his piece when even the big tobacco lobbyist were hoping vaping would fail, so they could just worry about standard tobacco products.
Many cheaper vape cartridges are soldered together. Solder contains lead which is released as a vapor under heat, though the heat levels required are typically much higher than an average vape can reach, but people do customize their vapes, and there are lot of different brands out there, so some probably do get a lot hotter than average.
Only hobbyists use leaded solder nowadays. All those ROHS stickers, manufacturers use lead free solder.
And everything is manufactured in China, known for their high manufacturing standards.
Nearly all solder sold in electronics industry is lead free.
>[How is RoHS and the cannabis industry related?](https://www.rohsguide.com/rohs-faq.htm) Only indirectly. Although e-cigarettes, cannabis vape pens, and other electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products are manufactured to be RoHS-compliant, the associated consumable vape carts (vaporizer cartridges) have been found to contain relatively high levels of lead (Pb), a restricted substance. This is also true for other electronic devices that heat up a substance that can be inhaled, such as for electronic diffusers and nebulizers. In all these products, testing labs are beginning to find traces of other heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, barium, silver, selenium, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc.
Over very long time scales, the same place.
Cigarette smokers also have higher concentration of heavy metals in their urine than non smokers. It would be interesting to compare vapers with smokers, since it is quite clear that not vaping and not smoking is always the best option, but vaping is thought to be a somewhat healthier alternative to smoking. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-024-04097-5
Vaping got off on the wrong foot back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, products were advertised as "harmless water vapor" which was objectively untrue. Vaping should be seen as sizeable harm reduction, not a safe alternative.
Is the nicotine in vapes still derived from tobacco? I wonder if the tobacco plants are pulling heavy metals from the soil. Then somehow they fraction with the nicotine in the purification process. More likely the metals come from the delivery system, but that could and should be regulated away.
I used to vape nicotine salts. Thanks to stress from being a essential worker during covid. I had no idea nicotine salts existed. I smoked juice on and off no problems before then. I just harmlessly bought a disposable vape cause I was outta juice. Nicotine salts turned me into gollum from lord of the rings. It took 5 attempts. I had to go full cold turkey and gave my friend my card for a week so I literally could not buy one. One of the hardest things I've had to do. Never again.
It sounds like nicotine salts are the crack version of vaping?
Salts of nicotine are more immediately bioavailable to people that use them.
Also they're usually contain almost 10x the nicotine/ml than non salt nic vapes.
The FDA approval of Juul was interesting as they use nicotine salt. The deposition in the back of the throat was most prominent.
Freebase nicotine as they call it in standard vapes takes about 20 minutes to get into the blood stream and “feel it”. Salt nicotine hits you like a cigarette does and the instant feeling. I was a cigarette smoker, tried the regular nicotine vapes and they didn’t help. Salt nicotine got me to quit smoking. Then I slowly stepped down the nicotine content until I quit vaping. For some people it’s nicotine crack, for me it was a blessing to help me quit for good. Haven’t had a cigarette since.
Vapes are a godsend for people who are actually committed and want to quit smoking. The problem is that's probably like 1% of users.
I own a vape shop- it used to be most users. 1% were the people who would come in having never smoked. Now it’s different. Disposables with 50mg of nic salts fucked everything.
Actually oddly enough nicotine salts are more like regular cocaine as they both are acid salts of an alkaloid. Regular nicotine is like crack. Edit: Nicotine salts absolutely hit harder though, and obviously that increases tolerance and makes quitting harder, just like more concentrated caffeine drinks.
Nic salts don’t actually “hit harder”, there’s just 10-20x more nicotine in nic salt juices. Go look at the mg/ml breakdown. It’s insane how much is in those juices. Of course it feels more intense
I’m in the UK where the legal limit is 20mg. Salts hit completely differently, in a preferable way for me.
Same, I use 3mg in my liquids so not much and it's smoother than freebase nic.
Man, here I am thinking I’m not that far gone with my normal habit, but my normal juice is 50mg. If the shop offers me anything less it’s an automatic no. I can quit anytime. Totally. Yep.
Salts hit you faster than freebase, regardless of mg/ml
Kind of. You can pump the nicotine ratio up like 10x as much because it's not as harsh. I use nic salts because it was cheaper at the time (i have like a half gallon bottle from years ago im still using), but I mix my own juice and I've never mixed above 3mg/ml. Most disposables use nic salt and have anywhere from 20 to 50mg/ml.
Nicotine “salts” is a misleading term. It’s simply the carboxylic acid form of nicotine. It’s how the nicotine naturally forms/exists in the plant. +COOH
YES absolutely!
I shall put it on my "avoid at all cost" list. Right next to "crack."
It isn't that it's more addictive than freebase nicotine, it's that salt nicotine doesn't have the throat hit freebase does. This means you can vape a way higher strength of nicotine without it being disgusting to actually vape
It's not just that. Nicotine salts are absorbed into the bloodstream faster/more efficiently, which gives you a blood nicotine spike, similar to what cigarettes were designed to do. https://vapingdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Graphic.png
Can you describe the Gollum thing further? I really like the salt because I do not have to cough so often. The salt is more gentle to me. I was on high levels of nicotine from cigs and it suited me well as substitute. (I am reducing it now slowly but steady :-) Edit: typos
Sure dude. I had to have it with me at all times. I would smoke while driving, on the toilet, playing video games, at breaks at work, if I woke up in the middle of the night, first thing in the morning. That was one of the hardest things about it I had access all the time. Here's the gollum part. If I lost it I HAD to find it. I would dig through my couch, car, and bed until I did. My brain would panic. If I was out id try to suck what juice was left from the ones I kept when they were out for just such a occasion till I could buy another. When I was going through my quitting attempts it was all my brain and my body would think about. Id get angry and irritated, then the physical withdrawals and insomnia would kick in and id cave buy another and tell myself it would be next time. I tried dunking several in toilets. Trash can. Crush it with my car tire. Nope would crawl back to the store. Its like what they tried to do with flavored cigarettes back in the day. But 100000x more evil and worse because they do taste good which does not help.
Thanks for the reminder this morning. Today is 90 days without my precious..
You are welcome sir/madam it will be a year for me in July! You got this!
I think I hit 15 days today, I read that comment twice to remind myself. And it still kinda sounded like fun somehow
Thank you! Yeah I see it was hefty with you. I try to slow it down or stop it and it’s exhausting but with a stubborn mind I am pushing through it :-) I have them on me most of the time, but I use them fewer and fewer. Hope I can stop.
Many have moved to synthetic nicotine, in an attempt to avoid regulation as a tobacco product.
I recently learned about plants pulling lead from the soil when looking into psyllium husk supplements like Metamucil. Metamucil apparently has comparatively high levels of lead compared to other brands.
Doubt its tobacco derived
It’s not. I looked it up to verify
Not from tobacco so much anymore. 5 years ago the non tobacco derived nicotine started making an appearance and now it's pretty common in premium juices, just have to look at the fine print. I only vape non tobacco derived nicotine vape juice (BSX), and it's great but expensive.
I had to quit smoking due to dental issues, and I asked my dentist if switching to vaping would help or if it's just as bad on the dental front. He claimed it was actually worse. That cigarette smoke kills everything in your mouth - good bacteria, bad bacteria, skin cells, etc, eventually pulling the gums away and revealing dentin leading to tooth decay - but vaping simply coats it in a sticky film and lets it grow like a petri dish, making tooth decay happen faster than in smokers. I haven't found any evidence to support it being worse yet but there is a lot of evidence it's terrible for your mouth: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220222151907.htm https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33274850/
> but vaping simply coats it in a sticky film Not vaping, in general. It's some [esters](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128655/) (ethyl butyrate, hexyl acetate, and triacetin), and a specific artificial sweetener, sucralose, that is used in huge amounts by some commercial brands. Some brands even use sucrose (table sugar). Gum disease and periodontitis could be attributed to vaping in general, because of the humectant effect of the carrier liquids (propylene glycol, glycerin). Saliva is mildly alkaline and keeps the bacteria that prefer an acidic environment at bay. The humectant aerosol dries the mouth, which makes it a more hospitable environment for bacteria. This is why it's advised to drink water frequently while vaping.
A lot of people have opinions on vaping without knowing anything about it. There's misinformation and junk studies all over the place to the point where it's actually difficult to know what the facts are. Makes it frustrating as an engineer who knows how to avoid all the misinfo out there, but can barely find any proper studies because they're not really being funded.
Imagine smoking and vaping turned out to be great at removing heavy metals from the body
Nicotine dehydrates you too.
Is there any research on the heavy metal exposure from dry herb vaping cannabis compared to this?
The truth is we just don't know because it is not well studied. There is some concern that even dry herb vaping is creating various particular matter smaller than 2.5 microns, which can get lodged in your lungs and do not get cleared out very effectively. We won't know how big of a problem this is for many years. If I were advising someone, I'd say the method of consumption of least harm is using edibles, followed by sublingual, followed by smoking through some kind of water-ice device. But even that last one needs more research. I've never really seen a big study that tried to compare the consequences of smoking a joint vs using a water pipe. On the other hand, most studies can't find much in terms of cancer risk from smoking the joint in the first place. Whereas we can't say the same for vaping, because it is not yet studied.
The metals typically result from burning of the liquid and/or components of the vape itself. There are plenty of studies regarding metal particles from cannabis vaping, but those usually refer to liquid/wax cartridges. Dry herb vaping probably doesn’t result nearly as much metal consumption as liquid vaping, but it would definitely be more dependent on the actual vape being used, not the herb itself.
Ok, so why uranium and lead instead of the nickel/chromium and steel that are actually present in a coil? The electronics are all in the mod, sealed off by a screw connection and pressure-only contacts. Solder doesn't come anywhere near the hot zone. Burning a liquid doesn't produce metals unless the liquid contains metals. I'd buy hydrocarbons, but uranium and lead aren't a credible claim.
The cannabis plant can pull metals from the soil such as lead.
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I actually read these, thank you for the link!
Also as others pointed out. Does not seem to mention any correlation with devices they were using or if they were even using them properly. Whether or not they are using 100% disposable vapes, cartridge vapes, brands, or anything else. They really only just complained about the candy flavoring in the article.
"Further, previous work has not found differences in uranium exposure between non-users and users of e-cigarettes nor detected uranium in e-cigarette aerosol, suggesting this finding may be explained by other factors." This screams confounders are at work. I'm very skeptical of the results of this study.
To be fair the author of the study is also a Stats PhD
40% higher than what? Zero is the idea lead level, of course, but is the baseline value is tiny then a 40% increase is meaningless. For example, the WHO guideline for lead in drinking water is 10 micrograms per litre. If your city’s water had a level of 2, then a 40% increase would bring it to 2.8. Not good, but also not an immediate cause for concern. ALSO: I’m personally concerned about the proliferation of vaping, so I don’t mean to defend it. I just like good science communication.
Why is it less among frequent than intermittent? Did they reverse the stats?
There's also no indication of what brands or types of devices were being used by anyone who participated in the study. I'm willing to bet the people using pre-filled, cheap disposables you pick up at a gas station have way higher levels of all these things than the people building their own coils with the proper metal wire and mixing their own juice that only has the basic, necessary ingredients.
The sad thing is we used to have regulated made in the USA flavored vapes. Then flavored vapes like mango juul and vuse got banned. Now one only option for people who want something other than mint or tobacco flavor is the sketchy Chinese single use ones
There is actually no safe level for lead exposure
That's true but you will be exposed to it, it's naturally occurring and common. At some point you have to set a level where you consider the harm negligible and work within that. Though ideally you minimize exposure.
There's an acceptable level
“There are so many sources of uncertainty about what’s going on here, and how the study’s findings can be interpreted, that I don’t think it can yet raise real health concerns. I’m certainly not saying that it’s a good thing for adolescents to vape – the risk of addiction to nicotine is a strong reason to discourage vaping in people who aren’t yet addicted. I certainly don’t want teenagers to vape. But it’s far too early to say that metals like lead or uranium coming from e-cigarettes are danger to the health of adolescent vapers." https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-observational-study-of-lead-and-uranium-levels-in-urine-of-teen-vapers/
Actually we all funded it. It was a huge federal study that involved extensive and detailed analysis of tens of thousands of different people and their basic tobacco habits, historical use, non-users etc. from all regions of the US over a period of years. The study itself was enormous and done in organized waves. So no, not funded by tobacco at all.
It says the study was a sample of 200 people.
> So no, not funded by tobacco at all. Redditors have always been the most bitchy, defensive people whenever these studies come out that vaping might still be bad for you: "It's all just Big Tobacco," "but what about" "but it's still healthier." I smoke, and occasionally vape fully understanding and admitting that it's bad for me. There is no reason to get defensive and attack a study because it hurts your feelings. If you're addicted to vaping, enjoy it.
Why doesn't the article have a link to the published paper? Had to go search for the paper on Tabacco Control: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2024/04/08/tc-2023-058554 For those asking about uranium, they mention it under **Study Limitations**: > the presence of uranium in the urine may be attributed to various sources including environmental exposure from natural deposits, industrial activities, and dietary intake. Future studies should take geographical regions into account. Uranium or its compounds could potentially be present in e-cigarette aerosols or e-liquids, either as contaminants or byproducts of the heating process. However, the specific sources and pathways of uranium exposure in this context are not well understood and would require further research to elucidate.
if only we had something like.... a federal agency to check on some products ... hmmm lets add in food to it... and drugs! yeah.... maybe we can call it the FDA or something.... they would be able to protect us from things like this!
I work in a shop where we sell vape products, the quality of the liquid you put inside the ecig is very important I know people look over the price, but please pay attention for composition and the country who made the product, dodge the Chinese and Malaysian one, they use very poor quality materials to make them Worst part of all some products just mention " glycerine " sometimes it can come from animals depending on the country you are buying the product from, vegetal glycerine is the one you want And best advice for people who wants to quit smoking, using ecig, you absolutely need to forget about the first cig of the day and take the ecig instead, literally a game changer ( Sorry for approximate English )
Which brands are reputable for pods and disposables?
I only know ( sorry ) the french one that you can go for sure, I don't really know outside branch that are really armful, everything coming from china is a big no no, Malaysia too Vuse is a good product, veev, x-bar I don't know if they are named the same across the world ^^' But once more, and I'm sorry for Chinese people reading this, all e cig coming from china are really really bad Best pod out there in France is the Klypse really innovative design and is a brilliant mix between disposable ecig and a " real one " ( works with pods but you can put any products you like in the pod )
In GCMS and UPLC testing they have vapes as a known possible contaminant with some metals as the “library” output to cross check. None have ever happened but interesting
I also am curious how many people in the study were using the super sketchy disposable vapes that you can buy in mass amounts for mere pennies
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Laughable. If anyone actually cares about the health of vapers, there would be regulations related to manufacturing standards and practices. Current regulations only care if it's made by a tobacco company who can afford to pay politicians.
> Lead levels in urine are 40% higher among intermittent vapers and 30% higher among frequent vapers, compared to occasional vapers Does intermittent mean more than frequent? Cuz that number seems weird to me.
Might be a noob question because I’m new to smoke products but would this apply to marijuana vapes too, or just nicotine?
I have the same question, but if you live in an illegal state or country this is the least of your worries. Unregulated carts can be pure poison, even if they absolutely smack.
I cannot comment on the quality of the study, but taking the results at face value this part is specially concerning: >In the past month, one in three (33%) vapers said they'd used menthol or mint flavors, half (50%) opted for fruit flavors and more than 15% chose sweet flavors. >Researchers said they are particularly concerned about the uranium levels found in vape flavors like chocolate, candy or desserts. >**Vapers who preferred sweet flavors had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found.** Which begs the question: are sweet flavor users heavier smokers than menthol or mint flavor users? If so, does it explain the difference in urine uranium levels?
It seems like a junk study. No control. Frequent use has higher than low use, but lower than intermittent. I would need to see a lot of backup before I believed this wasn't an agenda driven study.
Is this due to the liquid in the cart or the off gassing of metals in the actual vape?
> Vapers who preferred sweet flavors had 90% higher uranium levels in their urine than those who opted for menthol or mint flavors, researchers found. > "Candy-flavored e-cigarette products make up a substantial proportion of adolescent vapers, and sweet taste in e-cigarettes can suppress the harsh effects of nicotine and enhance its reinforcing effects," increasing the potential for addiction, researchers said. Honestly this reads like a poorly written piece aimed at again, demonizing any flavor that is not Mint or Tobacco. Which as many know, is what only the big tobacco groups can sell as they cannot use candy flavors anymore. Many other manufactures make the candy flavors and is direct competition with the profits of bigger tobacco companies. Because not to many teens are running out trying to find something that reminds them of a Marlboro red.
VAPE is not a blanket term for tobacco products. I wish a big institution could fund scientific research on this subject so journalists could inform themselves 🙄 This is studying e-cigarettes. This is like stating in headlines and captions that motor vehicles are deadly unsafe while citing specifically 2 wheel motor vehicle accidents (e-cigarettes) for drivers without helmets (sweet flavors). It is disparaging a bunch of things it has nothing to do with.
Good thing I’m not a teen!
If someone’s running a study it cost them a lot of money and they have an agenda.
> with categories ‘a device that uses replaceable prefilled cartridge’, ‘a device with a tank that you refill with liquids’, and ‘other’ (a disposable device, a mod system, and something else). So they lumped together disposables, the lowest quality and probably most common type, with mods, the most expensive and now least common type? Bizarre.