Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/Q_ysMuyhRLA

 

Electronic cigarette use is on the upswing, and their makers trumpet the latest studies showing that e-cigs help current tobacco smokers kick the habit.  In actuality, as older smokers quit more teens use e-cigs and move on to the nasty and dangerous habit that is tobacco cigarette smoking.

 

Besides the addicting nicotine, the e-cigs vaporize and spew a raft of of chemicals into the lungs including heavy metals, propylene glycol or anti-freeze, and formaldehyde.  The latest study from Harvard’s School of Public Health focuses on the toxicity of the chemicals used for flavoring the vapors.

 

Those ingredients are diacetyl and pentandione, and they create a buttery aroma.  You’ve definitely smelled it at the movie theater, and repeatedly inhaling the vapor leads to chronic irreversible lung damage and a disease appropriately named “popcorn lung.”

 

The Harvard team conclusively showed that these flavoring chemicals interfere with the genes that control development of normally functioning human ciliated respiratory lining cells growing in tissue culture.  This confirms findings in previous animal experiments where exposure to vaporized flavoring chemicals produced significant airway lining cell injuries.

 

Vaping, like tobacco smoking, is hazardous to your health.  E-cigarettes should not be marketed to children and they should be avoided by people of any age.

 

Hae-Ryung Park, Michael O’Sullivan, Jose Vallarino, etal.  Transcriptomic response of primary human airway epithelial cells to flavoring chemicals in electronic cigarettes.  Scientific Reports.  Volume 9, Article number: 1400 (2019)

 

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