So Much for “Safe” Vaping

It turns out that E-Cigs are pumping outs lots of formaldehyde.

So much for safe smokes:

Vapor produced by electronic cigarettes can contain a surprisingly high concentration of formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — researchers reported Wednesday.

The findings, described in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, intensify concern about the safety of electronic cigarettes, which have become increasingly popular.

………

He [David Peyton, one of the researchers] calls it “masked” formaldehyde because it’s in a slightly different form than regular formaldehyde — a form that could increase the likelihood it would get deposited in the lung. And the researchers didn’t just find a little of the toxicant.

“We found this form of formaldehyde at significantly higher concentrations than even regular cigarettes [contain] — between five[fold] and fifteenfold higher concentration of formaldehyde than in cigarettes,” Peyton says.

And formaldehyde is a known carcinogen.

“Long-term exposure is recognized as contributing to lung cancer,” says Peyton. “And so we would like to minimize contact (to the extent one can) especially to delicate tissues like the lungs.”

So, yes, FDA regulations is a good idea, and applying the same smoking bans to E-cigs as for the old fashioned cigarettes is an even better one.

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