Yeah, it’s clearly two very different products, markets, and usage patterns. (Three if you count the THC stuff.) Yet media and government keep conflating e-cigarettes/vape pens where you load your own liquid and vape it like you’d smoke a cigarette with juuls with their nicotine salt pods where kids use it like that and also with the THC cartridges.
Different things, different patterns of use, different problems. But they keep getting them all mixed up and treat them as the same.
I think one problem is the variety of products, both in trying to figure out what’s safe and what isn’t, and in trying to report it and getting things wrong.
Were cigarettes ever this variable? And was the damage done by the basic product (smoke from burning tobacco leaves) so bad that the damage from the variations that did exist (extra nicotine, flavorings, menthol, etc.) was minor?
Not to mention, the lung problems are more than likely due to contaminants in black market products, so let’s ban the legal ones and make everyone use the poisonous black market products? WTF?
Leading e-cigarette-maker Juul knowingly sold a large amount of contaminated mint-flavored e-liquid, endangering public health in the name of profits, according to a lawsuit brought by Siddharth Breja, the company’s former senior vice president of global finance.
The lawsuit does not indicate what the contaminate might be. But Breja’s suit notes that the contamination issue arose “in the wake of consumers recently having reported suffering seizures due to the use of Juul’s products.”
I’m allergic to mint, and nicotine, and could get sick from either fumes, but I assume they’re talking about another contaminant.
a bunch of nos and a bunch of maybes.
Since both mint (flavoring) and nicotine are supposed to be in that product, and since they usually don’t cause seizures, I definitely think they’re talking about something different that wasn’t supposed to be in them.
I know a couple of people who do use the THC vape cartridges. Until recently, they were legally available nearby. Now they’re not due to the ban. Overheard them talking about it today and oversaw a social media post “Anyone I know got an in on some vape carts?”
As expected, due to the ban of safe legal product, people who can’t get it are turning to the black market, when pretty much all the evidence points to contaminated black market product as the problem.
So I’m going to have to have a talk where I tell the kids to dig out a pipe or a bong or some rolling papers and smoke some real weed. Something I never thought I would have to say as a parent. Especially while they’re having a talk with me telling me that I need to get back to vaping instead of smoking cigarettes. (And they’re right - I had a bad week that undid 5 months of progress on quitting smoking, and now I have to redo it.)
I live in absurd times.
new article. Confirms what some had suspected.
“For the first time, we have detected a potential toxin of concern, vitamin E acetate, from biological samples from patients,” with lung damage linked to vaping, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news briefing.
The new report, based on samples taken from the lungs of 29 patients, including two who died, she said, “provided evidence of vitamin E acetate at the primary site of injury in the lungs.”
Sharing for the microwave popcorn tie-in.
From the NEJM
Vitamin E Acetate in Bronchoalveolar-Lavage Fluid Associated with EVALI
BACKGROUND
The causative agents for the current national outbreak of electronic-cigarette, or vaping, product use–associated lung injury (EVALI) have not been established. Detection of toxicants in bronchoalveolar-lavage (BAL) fluid from patients with EVALI can provide direct information on exposure within the lung.
##METHODS
BAL fluids were collected from 51 patients with EVALI in 16 states and from 99 healthy participants who were part of an ongoing study of smoking involving nonsmokers, exclusive users of e-cigarettes or vaping products, and exclusive cigarette smokers that was initiated in 2015. Using the BAL fluid, we performed isotope dilution mass spectrometry to measure several priority toxicants: vitamin E acetate, plant oils, medium-chain triglyceride oil, coconut oil, petroleum distillates, and diluent terpenes.RESULTS
State and local health departments assigned EVALI case status as confirmed for 25 patients and as probable for 26 patients. Vitamin E acetate was identified in BAL fluid obtained from 48 of 51 case patients (94%) in 16 states but not in such fluid obtained from the healthy comparator group. No other priority toxicants were found in BAL fluid from the case patients or the comparator group, except for coconut oil and limonene, which were found in 1 patient each. Among the case patients for whom laboratory or epidemiologic data were available, 47 of 50 (94%) had detectable tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or its metabolites in BAL fluid or had reported vaping THC products in the 90 days before the onset of illness. Nicotine or its metabolites were detected in 30 of 47 of the case patients (64%).
CONCLUSIONS
Vitamin E acetate was associated with EVALI in a convenience sample of 51 patients in 16 states across the United States. (Funded by the National Cancer Institute and others.)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently reported an increasing number of clinically cases of lung injury following use of vaping products. The cause(s) of this growing epidemic of vaping-associated pulmonary injury remain unidentified, although vitamin E acetate has been identified as
one possible causative agent. In this research, a combined analytical, theoretical, and experimental study has shown that the vaping of vitamin E acetate has the potential to produce exceptionally toxic ketene gas, which may be a contributing factor to the upsurge in lung injuries associated with vaping products. Our important results will help inform medical practitioners, research scientists, and the public, which may assist in bringing this medical crisis under control.