Vapor worse than cigarette smoke? Really?

"Study Finds E-Cigarettes Can Produce More Formaldehyde Than Regular Cigarettes!" 

"E-Cigarette Vapor Filled With Cancer-Causing Chemicals, Researchers Say!"

"High Levels of Formaldehyde Hidden In E-cigs!"

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? If they have studies that found e-cigarettes have more cancer-causing chemicals and formaldehyde than even regular cigarettes, how can anyone argue that vapor products are safe?

Easily, because it's all BS.

Imagine if researchers took perfectly safe vegetables, grilled them until they were blackened lumps of charcoal and then tested for "cancer-causing chemicals." Do you know what they would find? Yep - cancer-causing chemicals like benzopyrene, which is also found in cigarette smoke!  Then imagine if researchers claimed vegetables might be unsafe to eat because of their results? Wouldn't most people wonder who the heck would eat vegetables cooked that way in the first place?

So, what is the whole story behind the "cancer-causing chemicals" and formaldehyde found in the two recent studies behind the headlines? Well, first of all, the "cancer-causing chemicals" they mention is really one chemical - the formaldehyde. So, the headlines you are seeing are misleading from the get-go.

It's not "chemicals," it's one chemical.

OK, well that chemical is still formaldehyde. That's used for embalming dead bodies. Ew!

Of course, if they really found high levels of formaldehyde in vapor products, that would be pretty awful. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, after all. But did they find that the chemical was created during typical use or under special circumstances?

In the letter published by the New England Journal of Medicine, the researcher admits that "we did not detect the formation of any formaldehyde-releasing agents" when the device was set at typical settings. Only when they cranked up the device to the maximum setting were they able to create the formaldehyde. The problem is, a setting that high on a vapor device is akin to grilling your vegetables into charcoal. No one would like the taste of blackened lumps of veggies and no one would like the taste of the liquid in vapor products heated up to the maximum, either. It produces a harsh, bitter taste that causes the consumer to immediately stop using it.

So, why didn't the researchers take the taste into account and dismiss the results? Because they didn't use human test subjects. They didn't even talk to any vapor product consumers. They used a machine that has no sense of taste and therefore, would continue to "inhale" a foul-tasting vapor that no human would tolerate.

If these researchers were testing something with which they were familiar, they would have known that they were looking at something that they would never want to taste - like that lump of charcoal vegetable - and therefore, would have known immediately that it's not really a risk to anyone. Clearly, if you don't eat that foul-tasting burnt veggie, you won't consume any carcinogens. In the same way, if you don't use a vapor product at such high temperatures (because it tastes horrible) you wouldn't be exposed to any formaldehyde.

Of course, none of the news outlets covering this story have bothered to ask one simple question: Do people really use vapor products at such high temperatures? If they had, they'd know the answer is "no." Unfortunately, they follow the "if it bleeds, it leads" style of journalism and are all too happy to have scary headlines to generate readers and viewers.

On top of everything else, formaldehyde is only one of the cancer-causing chemicals found in cigarette smoke. Even if vapor products produced 15 times the levels of formaldehyde than cigarette smoke, they might still be far safer for lack of the other 60+ carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. To focus on just one chemical and claim that makes them a greater risk than smoking is bad science and bad for public health.

Is vapor really worse than cigarette smoke? Apparently, only if you like eating charcoal and ignore the other 59 carcinogens in the cigarette smoke.

For a more expert analysis of this formaldehyde issue please read:

The deception of measuring formaldehyde in e-cigarette aerosol: the difference between laboratory measurements and true exposure
"There are many other major issues in that study. The authors fail to realize that voltage levels provide no information about the thermal load of an e-cigarette device. It seems that both the researchers and the reviewers who approved the study for publication missed that energy should be expressed in watts."

Verified: formaldehyde levels found in the NEJM study were associated with dry puff conditions. An update
"It is more than obvious that the findings of very high levels of formaldehyde are a result of overheating. Lack of experience on e-cigarettes and no contact with vapers can result in such erroneous and unrealistic results, which can create confusion and misinformation both in the scientific community and among users and potential users of e-cigarettes."

New Study Reports High Levels of Formaldehyde in Electronic Cigarette Aerosols
"Essentially, what this study demonstrates is that if you overheat a vaping system, it will produce high levels of formaldehyde. However, such conditions are not realistic, as they could not be tolerated by an actual vaper. Therefore, extrapolating from this study to a lifetime of vaping is meaningless."

Spreading fear and confusion with misleading formaldehyde studies
"This is a trend that should shame the public health community and the academics that are fuelling consumers’ misunderstanding with misleading studies that misrepresent risk.  I am sure it is not your aim to protect the cigarette trade and prolong the epidemic of smoking related disease, but it may well be the effect."

Bogus Research on Formaldehyde in E-Cig Vapor
"R. Paul Jensen and colleagues at Portland State University produced the new results by overheating an e-cigarette, a condition (called dry puffing) that is familiar to vapers; the resulting product tastes so bad it cannot be inhaled.  In other words, the formaldehyde produced under abusive conditions is not “hidden” at all, because it is in vapor that users find intolerable."

Why I oppose vapor bans (and why you should, too.)

Next week, vapers in Madison, Wisconsin will be fighting a proposed amendment to that city's smoking ordinance, which adds the use of vapor products to the definition of "smoking." This will ban the use of all vapor products anywhere smoking is prohibited.

On the surface, this may not seem like a big deal to most vapor consumers. Most experienced vapers either don't find it necessary to vape where smoking is prohibited or can easily vape discreetly enough to go unnoticed. However, the reason I oppose these bans has nothing to do with any desire to vape in an Applebee's or at a Home Depot. My concern is the unintended consequences of such bans to overall public health.

Are e-cigarettes the new condom?

For anyone who is under the age of 30, you may not remember the time when condom advertising barely existed, let alone cheeky commercials playing over and over on late-night television. The understanding we have today of safe sex practices were actually quite controversial even in an age when HIV/AIDS was at the height of public fear.

The debate

Back in the 1980's, it was the left-leaning progressives (then called "liberals") who led the charge for "harm reduction" practices. Supported by Democrat lawmakers, academics and scientists, the public health groups at the time argued that the public needed to be educated about using condoms to significantly reduce the risk of HIV and other STDs. They encouraged Sex Ed teachers to tell high school students that, if they decided not to remain abstinent, to at least use a condom.

A Five Year Journey

As of today, I haven't smoked a cigarette in five years.

But I didn't set out to quit smoking. I became what is known as an "accidental quitter" when I switched to using an electronic cigarette. Before I tried one, I was resigned to being a smoker until I died.

As I reported in my very first article about e-cigarettes in 2009, "Negative Reactions Mystify Electronic Cigarette Owners," my husband and I bought our first electronic cigarettes from a booth at the state fair -- on a lark. The sales pitch that sold us was that the devices were less expensive than conventional cigarettes, didn't contain the tar and smoke that increase the risk of "smoking-related" diseases and could be used where smoking would soon be prohibited in my state. We spent over $200 on two kits. Note that although we'd tried quitting many times before (and I had quit during every pregnancy and while nursing), we did not buy the e-cigarettes to use as an alternative to quitting smoking with gums or patches. We weren't looking for a way to quit smoking. We bought them as a safer, less expensive and  more convenient substitute for conventional cigarettes. It's important to understand that e-cigarettes are not for people who are trying to quit smoking -- they are for those who cannot or will not quit, so they need a safer alternative. Like condoms are for safer sex, e-cigarettes are for safer "smoking."

CASAA is truly grassroots, not a 'front group'

I recently came across a blog post about e-cigarettes that had this in the comments:

What strikes me about CASAA is that the board is stacked with power players: lawyers, smokeless tobacco lobbyists and web marketing experts. Not a random assortment of Americans, but exactly what a company would seek out as a PR front.

Once I stopped laughing at "stacked with power players" and picked myself up off the floor, I wanted to set the record straight.

CASAA, The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association, was formed in 2009 on an online e-cigarette enthusiast forum. Here is a thread discussing the creation of the organization, before it even had a name: ECO - Organization Charter: Administration and here you can see a lot of the democratic process that went into the name and organization. Clearly, CASAA was not formed by e-cigarette or tobacco companies as a "PR front."

It's not "just an addiction"

Although my 21 year old son has a mother who advocates smokeless alternatives for smokers, he and his older brother (who was quite anti-smoking when he was younger) both started smoking. My younger son tried e-cigarettes, but didn't really get into them until some of his smoking friends made the switch. My elder son soon followed suit.

The other day, my younger son posted a photo of his new e-cigarette "wrap" on his Facebook page. His uncle then posted this:

"I just quit outright. Not sought out a surrogate....E-cigs are like giving up sex, but feeling that doing a blow up doll every night is not at all the same. Why waste money? Just live smoke free, and end the social addiction aspects, which keep you in "smokers mode" Just quit the actual habit, and walk away a richer man...Nicotine is neither hallucinogenic, nor pleasing. it merely takes away the craving for more nicotine. That is all it does."

My two days in Wisconsin's capitol

Tuesday and Wednesday this week, I drove to Madison (a total of 708 miles for two round trips) to testify before two legislative committees regarding exempting e-cigarettes from indoor smoking bans. These bills (SB 440 and AB 762) seek to clarify that e-cigarette use is not included in the smoking bans and to preempt smaller municipalities from including e-cigarettes in their bans. Believe it or not, after 4 1/2 years with CASAA, this is the first time I've actually had the opportunity to testify regarding e-cigarettes. Happily, this was a bill that I could support.