E-Cigarettes! Are they breakthroughs in a battle to help people quit smoking? Or will e-ciggies create a new generation of nicotine addicts? Well, the idea of Electronic Cigarettes is that they are the new and safe cigarettes for modern smokers. Read To find out the difference between Vape vs. Smoke and Is Vaping Really Safer than Smoking?
Hmmm, so what is an e-cigarette?
Electronic Cigarettes use a battery to heat up a liquid which is usually propelling glycol or glycerol, and inside the liquid, there is nicotine and your choice of flavors. Yes, so that’s the stuff. When the liquid is heated up to a point it tends to an aerosol that can be inhaled giving the nicotine buzz of a cigarette without critically burning tobacco, and that’s why its argued these devices are a lot safer than conventional ciggies. This is because when you burn tobacco thousands of chemicals are produced which is said are the ones that damage your body.
What e-cigarette companies are saying?
“Using electronic cigarette vs. smoking is tens of thousands less harmful in terms of toxicity,” says Simone Davis, Marketing Director of Liberty Flights, a company that makes e-cigarettes. Now she says that even though there is nicotine in e-cigarettes, that’s not the problem. “Nicotine is diminished. If you look at the size nicotine isn’t necessarily bad for you and that part of I think it’s a misconception by consumers.” Simone says many people who find it very difficult to quit smoking conventional cigarettes moved to the electronic stuff. The experience is generally profound, we have people talking to a sign, “you don’t know how this has helped me. I no longer wake up with an elephant on my chest. My cough has gone.”
So, that’s what the electronic cigarette company says. But then, there’s science.
Let’s explore whether e-cigarettes are safe and if they are then how they can help people stop smoking tobacco. Now even if you’re not a smoker, the world of e-cigarettes is really important because, after decades of anti-tobacco messages such as, smoking doesn’t just give people lung cancer, it increases the risk of mouth cancer and non-smoking laws, somehow will make electronic cigarettes a big business.
According to data found in the Centre of Disease Control in the U.S. reveals that more than 2 million students over there have used e-cigarettes, meaning that in the United States now more kids are vaping than who are smoking. The smoking rates are going down and vaping going up and up. And it’s not just students in the States using e-cigarettes. New figures show the number of people using e-cigarettes in the U.K. has trebled in two years to 2.1 million. 80 percent of people are coming here are like beginner vapors or people who want to quit smoking.
Are vapers happier?
While the aerosol from an e-cigarette is often referred to as vapor, it’s not scientifically correct. Vapor is the gaseous state of a substance, while an aerosol is a mixture of fine particles of liquids and solids which are found in gas. Are e-cigarettes safer than cigarettes with tobacco? Dozens of studies found that the levels of most cancer-causing chemicals are much lower in e-cigarettes than cigarettes. Conclusion- e-cigarettes are safer than smoking tobacco.
But even if e-cigarettes are less dangerous that doesn’t mean they are safe. Because the danger around e-cigarettes is still so stressed and terribly high, it’s like comparing 15th highest mountain in the world to Mount Everest. Conclusion- climbing mount Gyachung Kang is pretty tricky. And that leads us to our next question.
How safe are e-cigarettes?
Could those chemicals found in them even at lower doses the noise found in conventional cigarettes, be harmful?
You’re still inhaling a lot of toxic chemicals! Some of those flavors added to e-cigarettes are quite dangerous. One of them is called diacetyl—the buttery flavor used in a lot of food products that we eat but if you breath-in it causes something called “popcorn lung.” This is also called bronchiolitis obliterans and people working around microwave popcorn uses diacetyl as an additive have been known to develop serious and irreversible lung disease(s).
On top of this, when the liquid inside in e-cigarette gets heated up along within nicotine and flavorants it creates an aerosol of ultrafine particles that carry nicotine deep into the lungs, where it is absorbed. According to studies, these particles which are so tiny of about 150th width of the human hair can go right through the air sacs in your lungs, then through your blood vessels and into your blood. Once they get into your system, they trigger information. Kind of like when you cut yourself that information can trigger biological processes that change the blood and lining in your arteries and can even lead to a heart attack.
There’s also a debate going on about whether nicotine in itself is dangerous. Nicotine is a mild stimulant, like caffeine. It changes the physiology of the brain and in the image a lot of normal neuron developments. However, it’s hard to say whether nicotine is all that harmful because a lot of people who have sucked up high levels of nicotine over long periods of time, were smoking tobacco. So, it’s difficult to tease apart the effects of nicotine vs. those other chemicals in tobacco. We really don’t know enough if in itself dangerous. But one thing we know about nicotine is that it’s very addictive. There may be a possible vision where some of these chemicals that are put in e-cigarettes are harmful and can create a new generation of problems.
Conclusion: We won’t know how dangerous e-cigarettes really are for possible decades. Meanwhile, e-cigarettes are highly addictive but still a much better alternative than smoking. There’s also the concern that people who aren’t really trying to quit cigarettes but think that they should, those people will keep on smoking, thanks to e-cigarettes.
