E-cigarettes aren't as safe as you think they are

Bad news for smokers trying to quit the habit with electronic cigarettes: the gadgets might also prove dangerous to your health in the long run.

 

A new study suggests that while the e-cigarette was originally designed to give users a smoke-free nicotine fix, it could lead to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

 

ScienceNews.org cited a study by Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, showing the vapors released by an e-cigarette can deliver nanoparticles that can trigger inflammation.

 

In turn, the inflammation may be linked to asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes.

 

Glantz said the levels “really raise concerns about heart disease and other chronic conditions where inflammation is involved.”

E-cigarette sales surpassing tobacco cigarettes

 

It's worrisome problem, as Ii-Lun Chen and Corinne Husten of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products in Rockville indicated e-cigarette sales could pass those of traditional cigarettes within 10 years.

 

ScienceNews also cited data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing at least one in five smokers and 10 percent of US high school students had tried e-cigarettes.

 

Meanwhile, FDA's Priscilla Callahan-Lyon said the agency has seen no data supporting claims that vaping is safe.

Carbonyls and cancer

 

Callahan-Lyon, who reviewed data from 18 studies on e-cigarettes’ vapors, found most contain at least traces of the solvents where nicotine and flavorings had been dissolved.

 

She said the solvents can become carbonyls, which includes known cancer-causing chemicals such as formaldehyde, and suspected carcinogens such as acetaldehyde.

 

Meanwhile, Maciej Goniewicz of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York said that newer e-cigarette models, which allow higher temperatures, can break down the solvents and produce the carbonyls.

 

If the compounds in smoke make it into the lungs, very small aerosols could get into the lung’s tiniest airways.

Antibiotics resistance
 

But the worst part is that e-cigarette vapors can make dangerous germs harder to kill, according to Laura Crotty Alexander, a pulmonary and critical care physician and scientist.

 

The report said the antibiotic-resistant bacteria can cause pneumonia, and are harder to kill with a germ-killing protein fragment, similar to a natural antibiotic people’s bodies make.

 

“We started these studies so that we could advise our smoking patients on whether they should try switching to e-cigarettes. My data now indicate they might be the lesser of the two evils. But e-cigarettes are definitely not benign,” she said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News