E‑cigarettes were initially marketed as a sleek way to help people quit traditional cigarettes — but that sentiment has largely gone up in smoke.
Research indicates that most adult smokers who try vaping end up using both, while many teens who never smoked are getting hooked on nicotine through vaping.
Roughly 11 million Americans vape regularly, and though vapes are still considered less harmful than cigarettes because they don’t burn tobacco — the source of tar and many carcinogens — mounting evidence shows they’re far from safe.
A new study — published Wednesday in the journal ACS Central Science — revealed that e-cigarettes release a shocking amount of toxic metals, with some producing more lead in a day’s use than nearly 20 packs of traditional cigarettes.
“Our study highlights the hidden risk of these new and popular disposable electronic cigarettes — with hazardous levels of neurotoxic lead and carcinogenic nickel and antimony — which stresses the need for urgency in enforcement,” senior study author Brett Poulin, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Toxicology, said in a statement.
“These risks are not just worse than other e-cigarettes but worse in some cases than traditional cigarettes,” Poulin added.
The research was led by Mark Salazar, a PhD candidate in Poulin’s lab, who wanted to know more about what his friend — a vaper — was putting into his body.
When he tested the disposable vape pod in the lab, he was stunned by the results.
“When I first saw the lead concentrations, they were so high I thought our instrument was broken,” Salazar said. “That sparked us into looking further into these disposables.”
Researchers took a good, hard look into seven types of disposable devices from three of the most popular brands — Esco Bar, Flum Pebble and ELF Bar.
They discovered “these disposable devices have toxins already present in the e-liquid, or they’re leaching quite extensively from their components into e-liquids and ultimately transferred to the smoke,” Salazar said.
Some of the devices contained nickel and antimony levels that could increase the risk of cancer, as well as lead and nickel emissions that could lead to brain and lung damage.
Equally worrying is that the newer, disposable vapes seemed to emit more toxic metals than earlier, refillable vapes.
The researchers urged more research and regulation around e-cigarettes, especially because the market is outpacing the science.
While New York and the federal government restricted the sale of flavored e-cigarettes or vapes in 2020, the ban has not really been enforced — and new e-cigarette products are continuously emerging.
