Increased Cases Of Lung Disease From Vaping Remain A Mystery

[Kara Spengler]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, despite most of the hype in vaping centering around the claim that "it's just water", the fact is that it's not just water, it's a solution of water plus nicotine and various flavoring, scent, and coloring chemicals whose cumulative effect when coating airways and lung tissues over the long term was unknown when vaping took off. They could have any number of possible health effects.

The mixture depends on the fluid being used. For example, not all fluids have nicotine, despite that being the drum anti-vapers want to beat.

The flavoring is pretty much anything. Anything food-based and already FDA approved I would guess is safe but when you use random chemicals who knows what you will

The base itself also varies, it can be either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin.

While we are leaning to an insane level of regulation I would agree some standards should be in there. Like a list of ingredients and if you choose from that you get to say you met that safety standard. Anything else you do not get to use it and would have to label what it contains.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I was an occasional vaper, with flavored 0% nicotine juices, but I stopped because I was uneasy about inhaling the hot air. At the very least, I noticed that I was quickly dehydrated after vaping. Even without the chemicals, the heat alone has to irritate tissues. It's probably not as bad for you as smoking cigarettes, but since I wasn't even a smoker, I decided it just wasn't worth the risk.

Yeah, I am an occasional vaper too. Also 0% nic but I also restrict it to vegetable glycerin and only use a few juices I know would be purely vegan. Generally I lean towards harm reduction, nothing in this world is truly harmless but as habits go there was no WAY it is as harmful as smoking or drinking.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I looked this up a while ago when I find out my nephew was vaping. It's less harmful relative to cigarettes but it's still addictive and it can cause the same respiratory illnesses. That last was the part that really alarms me, having seen first hand the effects. I don't want my nephew to go through, later in life, what my aunt did.

Addiction is not the activity but the personality.

I just got bored of vaping and eventually left it in my desk for a couple of years. If I pulled it out again it would not be through being addicted but because there was nothing else to do that afternoon.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I used vaping many years ago now to quit smoking. I made my own liquid after buying the nicotine, flavoring and vg (vegetable glycerin) from a lab. That's it, 3 ingredients. I never used thc in it and I stopped vaping when I no longer desired to do it.

It sounds like kids in particular are using these things to get high. I'm guessing they would consider it a more easily hidden method than smoking a joint, especially from parents and other authorities. Now, you cannot just walk into a vape store and buy thc oils. I'm pretty sure that is illegal. You'd be buying it from who knows who, and who knows how they made it. It would basically be like going on the corner and getting a bag of weed or any other drug as far as safety goes. As someone pointed out in either the article or the comments, if they used butane it would be very dangerous and also if the oil wasn't burnt off properly it would also be dangerous.

I suspect a supplier who is making bad stuff centered somewhere in the upper midwest, though to my knowledge one should not be using a vape to ingest thc oil. The nature of the heat alone makes it risky. I hope authorities are trying to track down where they got the liquid they are using. I think the article said that it was from a variety of sources, but it is concentrated in a few states, which is highly indicative, to me, of a bad source or perhaps a couple bad sources using the same methods. They would want to get a handle on this quickly, I would think.

I think we should make a distinction in that what these folks seem to be suffering is a rapid injury to the lungs, suggesting that it is related to the substance rather than the type of damage one might see long term like lung cancer. That, remains to be seen over a number of years by users, much like smoking took.

Actually, depending on the state you might be able to buy it at the local dispensary. If we are talking kids though you can buy CBD on the internet and they are probably trying to get high off of it.

 

[Kara Spengler]

The lack of specifics on what these kids are vaping is kinda irking me with these stories.

Its just odd cuz with vaping ive never felt better. Only prob I've ever had was the dehydration.

Try VG based juices. Harder to find but they are out there.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Anything food-based and already FDA approved I would guess is safe

Well it seems that's the problem, manufacturers apparently made the same assumption, but apparently just because something is safe to eat doesn't mean it's safe to coat your lungs with.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Well it seems that's the problem, manufacturers apparently made the same assumption, but apparently just because something is safe to eat doesn't mean it's safe to coat your lungs with.

The obvious example is any flavor that is *buttery*. They use the same chemical as that which is/was used to make microwave popcorn and was dangerous to the workers who inhaled it.

Here's a list of some flavors that are bad and why.

These Are The 7 Most Toxic Vaping Flavors, According To Science

 

[Clara D.]

Well it seems that's the problem, manufacturers apparently made the same assumption, but apparently just because something is safe to eat doesn't mean it's safe to coat your lungs with.

That and the black market could give a shit less about what their crap does to people.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Addiction is not the activity but the personality.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and agree. It’s a limb because we’ve all listened for years to “alcoholism is an illness and you need God” which can’t possibly be a scientific statement, but 12 Steps still dominate addiction treatment.

I now live among the very poor, all of them with a physical or mental disability. You can take any two people with the same diagnosis and one of them will have the addictive personality and one will not - and you can tell which is which pretty quickly if you have seen this enough.

Addictive personalities are very hard to live with. They’re not the guy who is functional but parties a bit hard. Rather, what’s theirs is theirs, and what’s yours is theirs. Lock your door! And they often hate anyone who has a different priority than feeding addiction (because what’s yours is theirs), so boundaries of the sort most adults take for granted just make them angry.

My amateur belief is that part of this issue is “external locus of control.” If you have an internal locus of control, an ethical code, and adult boundaries with adult goals, you will come under attack from a severe addict because this personal autonomy is something you have that is not serving their addiction.

I also think our society trains people to be addicts. This is why I get so angry at the idea of promoting nicotine, alcohol, etc. to teenagers. Some of them will wind up with a problem neither they nor the adults around them yet really understand. We need less God and more science.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Kara Spengler]

I’m going to go out on a limb here and agree. It’s a limb because we’ve all listened for years to “alcoholism is an illness and you need God” which can’t possibly be a scientific statement, but 12 Steps still dominate addiction treatment.

I now live among the very poor, all of them with a physical or mental disability. You can take any two people with the same diagnosis and one of them will have the addictive personality and one will not - and you can tell which is which pretty quickly if you have seen this enough.

Addictive personalities are very hard to live with. They’re not the guy who is functional but parties a bit hard. Rather, what’s theirs is theirs, and what’s yours is theirs. Lock your door! And they often hate anyone who has a different priority than feeding addiction (because what’s yours is theirs), so boundaries of the sort most adults take for granted just make them angry.

My amateur belief is that part of this issue is “external locus of control.” If you have an internal locus of control, an ethical code, and adult boundaries with adult goals, you will come under attack from a severe addict because this personal autonomy is something you have that is not serving their addiction.

I also think our society trains people to be addicts. This is why I get so angry at the idea of promoting nicotine, alcohol, etc. to teenagers. Some of them will wind up with a problem neither they nor the adults around them yet really understand. We need less God and more science.

One thing that annoys me is when business models feed off of addictive personalities, usually with gambling. For example, in gaming you have loot boxes. Of sure, every game finds some weasel words to get around the letter of the law (ea uses 'surprise mechanics') to say they are not doing it, but they know full well what they are doing. It is also why people refuse to participate in these schemes: even if we are not addicts of some sort we refuse to be party to that type of a practice.

 

[Arilynn]

Compared to smoking, I'd bet vaping does less harm, assuming your liquid isn't contaminated. I, however, have never been a smoker. I'm pretty sure it was Arilynn who gently, tactfully suggested that vaping wasn't necessarily something I should take up just for the heck of it. Although I wasn't quite willing to concede the point at the time, her concern stayed with me and it was part of the reason I slacked off, then stopped altogether.

I’m so glad you quit!

It could be the moisture, too. I mean, look at pneumonia - it's moisture in the lungs, basically.

Not to be too picky, but moisture alone isn’t the problem. When you get a bronchoscopy (tube down into the lungs), the MD may squirt some sterile, isotonic saline directly into your bronchi. It is then sucked back up to be tested in a lab. But anything you suck into your lungs via your mouth may pick up microbes on its way down, even if it starts out sterile. And no one habitually gets bronchoscope lavage, which could overwhelm the normal functioning of the lining of the lungs.

Well, you're supposed to eat it. Not inhale it.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to heat up chemicals in what is most likely non-sterile fluid (thus making them more active and increasing the risk of microbial contamination) and deliver them directly to the highly absorptive mucous membranes of my lungs, much less do this on a regular basis. I understand doing it as part of a smoking cessation plan, especially armed with as much information as you can get. But it shouldn’t be a “buyer beware” situation. It should be heavily tested and regulated. And it shouldn’t be marketed or sold to kids.

 

[Cristiano]

Trump Wants FDA To Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes

More than 450 people have been hospitalized for lung diseases associated with vaping and e-cigarettes.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Trump Wants FDA To Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes

More than 450 people have been hospitalized for lung diseases associated with vaping and e-cigarettes.

www.huffpost.com

lol k

Trump administration's new proposal aimed at helping coal industry

The Trump administration wants to make it easier for energy companies to open new coal-fired power plants.

abcnews.go.com

Smokestacks for everyone!

 

[Brenda Archer]

Trump Wants FDA To Ban Flavored E-Cigarettes

More than 450 people have been hospitalized for lung diseases associated with vaping and e-cigarettes.

www.huffpost.com

Only the flavored ones?

Something about this doesn’t add up.

 

[Brenda Archer]

Only the flavored ones?

Something about this doesn’t add up.

And it still doesn’t seem to set up any research or oversight.

Something about this reminds me of the way conservatives pushed to keep supplements unregulated, and then it came out they were making money off them.

 

[Brenda Archer]

One thing that annoys me is when business models feed off of addictive personalities, usually with gambling. For example, in gaming you have loot boxes. Of sure, every game finds some weasel words to get around the letter of the law (ea uses 'surprise mechanics') to say they are not doing it, but they know full well what they are doing. It is also why people refuse to participate in these schemes: even if we are not addicts of some sort we refuse to be party to that type of a practice.

Yes. There’s a lot in gaming that seems ethically dodgy. When I was working at Yahoo! I spent some time taking calls for billing for the Games department. They were dumb little pay-to-play games and it was seriously sad how vulnerable people were pouring money into them, just to get the next hit. I was glad when it was finally shut down. I am certain people have ruined their limited finances over things like this.

 

[Romana]

Only the flavored ones?

Something about this doesn’t add up.

The assumption is that it's the flavored ones that are luring kids, and if it wasn't for the flavoring, only adults quitting smoking would use it. I'm not sure that's valid, because kids still take up smoking, and the cigarettes aren't candy flavored.
And why's 45 going after it? Well, it's a safer target than guns (unless the vape makers start chucking money at him) and he could pretend that he cares about something.

 

[Brenda Archer]

The assumption is that it's the flavored ones that are luring kids, and if it wasn't for the flavoring, only adults quitting smoking would use it. I'm not sure that's valid, because kids still take up smoking, and the cigarettes aren't candy flavored.
And why's 45 going after it? Well, it's a safer target than guns (unless the vape makers start chucking money at him) and he could pretend that he cares about something.

It seems silly to me to imply it’s for candy flavor and not nicotine. Nobody will stop a teenager with money from buying candy or soda.

 

[Cristiano]

After vaping-related illness, teen now has lungs like 'a 70-year-old's'

Adam Hergenreder's vaping habit almost killed him. His case is one of now more than 450 lung illness associated with using e-cigarettes across the United States.

www.cnn.com