More lies about e-cigarettes

A national newspaper amplifies a crank

Nearly every word of this Daily Mail article is a lie.

A doctor has warned that vaping is 'barbequing your lungs' and increases the risk of lung transplants in young people. 

Dr Brian Boxer Wachler, an eye surgeon in Beverly Hills, California, took to TikTok last week to explain why vaping is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes.

'Vape temperatures can be significantly hotter than cigarette smoke, so vape literally could be barbequing your lungs,' he said in the video, which has 6.3 million views.

Cigarettes combust at 800°C whereas vapour is heated to around 200°C so this is not a good start. Anyone who has ever vaped and smoked can tell that smoke is hotter than vapour. Maybe people shouldn’t get their information from Californians on Tik Tok?

'[This could] explain why more younger people who vape need lung transplants versus younger people who smoke cigarettes.'

There is no evidence that young people who vape need lung transplants. Perhaps some older vapers have had lung transplants because they used to smoke. If so, it’s pretty obvious why that would be.

Earlier this year, the American Heart Association (AHA) warned that the cocktail of nicotine, thickeners, solvents, and flavors in vape devices poses greater risks to heart health than smoking cigarettes. 

I can’t find any evidence of them saying that. They don’t say it in the linked article or on their website, although they do claim that there is “no strong evidence” that vaping helps people quit smoking - which is a lie - and they boast that “The American Heart Association is a relentless force against vaping” which is highly irresponsible given the known risks of smoking to the heart.

In any case, it is not true.

Long-term exposure to diacetyl and acetyl propionyl, two flavoring additives, has been linked to shortness of breath, chronic cough, asthma, and obstructed airways.

In large enough doses, this may be true but they are not used in e-cigarettes in the UK or EU because they have been banned.

Experts have also warned against secondhand vaping. 

Scientists from universities in Virginia and North Carolina reported that when e-cigarette users puffed in their cars for less than 10 minutes, the air around them became laden with possibly poisonous particulate matter known specifically as PM2.5 (denoting a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or smaller).

The word ‘possibly’ is doing a lot of work here. PM2.5 is everywhere and vaping in a car with all the windows closed is hardly a typical environment.

Vapes that don't have nicotine can also lead to 'e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury,’ or EVALI.

No they can’t. It is specific to a batch of THC vapes in the USA circa 2019.

The exact cause of the injury still isn’t completely clear, but researchers have since zeroed in on the compound Vitamin E Acetate, which is often used as a thickening agent in illegal cannabis vape devices. 

That is, in fact, the exact cause. You don’t need to look any further. It happened for a few months in North America where those devices were available. It didn’t happen anywhere else and it didn’t happen again once they were removed from the (black) market. Case closed.

Dr Boxer Wachler pointed to a 2022 study published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology, which found that of 11,350 patients with vape lung damage, half vaped both nicotine and THC, the ingredient in cannabis that gives users a 'high.'

However, more than one-third of patients vaped THC alone, while 17 percent vaped nicotine.

Don’t be so naive. They said they only vaped nicotine because they didn’t want to admit engaging in criminal activity. It’s surprising the figure wasn’t higher.

EVALI has caused some harrowing health scares. A 34-year-old woman from Ohio, who was going through around eight cartridges of vape fluid each week, the equivalent of 50 cigarettes a day, found herself on life support within 24 hours of going to urgent care for trouble breathing.

In another terrifying case, a 20-year-old woman from the UK named Abby Flynn developed a rare lung condition, dubbed 'popcorn lung', which doctors warned could have left her reliant on an oxygen machine before she turned 30.

Popcorn lung is caused by inhaling large quantities of diacetyl which, as I have mentioned, cannot be used in vapes and even when it was used it wasn’t in large enough quantities to cause popcorn lung. Cigarettes contain 100 times more diacetyl and there have been no recorded cases of popcorn lung from smoking either.

Millions of people have been vaping for years. If such cases of lung damage were caused by vaping, we would have epidemiological evidence for it rather than a couple of shaggy dog stories.

Federal data suggests that about 14 percent - over 2.5 million - of American youth from 6th through 12th grades vape, while another study reported one in 20 American adults vape. That compares to just one in 10 tobacco smokers.

One in 10 is more than one in 20, so I don’t know why the word ‘just’ has been inserted. It would be a good thing if there were few smokers than vapers.

Please note that even if every claim in this article wasn’t bollocks, it still wouldn’t imply that “vaping is much worse than smoking cigarettes”. Brian Boxer Wachler doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his irresponsible nonsense shouldn’t be amplified by a newspaper.