Clearly anything that might possibly get people to stop smoking cigarettes is a good thing. I don’t think anyone disputes this fact that doesn’t work for Philip Morris. Though, I personally seem to come across electronic cigarettes — oft touted as a tool to kick tobacco cigarettes — less in smoking quitting situations than in situations where people just want to smoke inside. So, not as a replacement for cigarettes, but as an addition to cigarettes. I bring this up only because I haven’t seen it talked about much; the conversation seems more interested in that cigarette-replacement best case, and not on those instances where electronic cigarettes are just a way around smoking bans.
Interestingly, much like cigarettes in their early days, we don’t know a whole lot about electronic cigarettes and health. They just haven’t been around long enough for deep study. A 2009 study of two leading electronic cigarette brands found detectable concentrations of “known carcinogens and toxic chemicals ,” though a 2011 editorial in the Harm Reduction Journal blasted the FDA results, saying that the concentrations found “are highly unlikely to have any possible significance to users.” Which, while true that may be, it isn’t the end of the electronic cigarette debate. A new study being presented today at the European Respiratory Society’s Annual Congress done by researchers at the University of Athens found that e cigs are actually hurting users’ lungs, at least in the very short-term.
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Here it is in brief: researchers took eight people who had never smoked and 24 smokers, 11 with normal lung function and 13 people with either COPD or asthma. Each of the 32 puffed on an electronic cigarette — which produces vapor instead of smoke — for 10 minutes. Every participant in the study was recorded afterward as having an immediate increase in airway resistance that lasted for 10 minutes.
What this means in the long-term or why it even happens remains to be seen. One of the study’s authors, Christina Gratziou, said in a press release, “We do not yet know whether unapproved nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigarettes, are safer than normal cigarettes, despite marketing claims that they are less harmful. We found an immediate rise in airway resistance in our group of participants, which suggests e-cigarettes can cause immediate harm after smoking the device. More research is needed to understand whether this harm also has lasting effects in the long-term.”
A lot of things can cause increased airway resistance, and they’re all bad, ranging from tissue spasms to tumors to asthma to serious allergic reactions. The study isn’t exactly e cig doomsday, but let’s at least stop pretending these things are harmless.
