The public keep on asking these questions.
No: You cannot even get first hand smoke from a vaporiser – It is vapour, not smoke. This may seem to be pedantry but it is not. It is so important that the public, everyone, understands the difference between smoke and vapour. Until that happens, people will continue to ask the kind of question that you have.
It is vapour, not smoke.
What then is the difference?
Vapour does not contain anything like the number of chemicals as found in cigarette smoke. Some say that cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 different compounds. A significant number of them being toxic leading to damage to our cells. Many are carcinogenic. Vapour, on the other hand is very different.
One reason why vaping is so much safer than smoking is that there is no burning taking place – Well, there is when vaporisers are in the hands of scientists that do not have any idea of how to work them, and know nothing about the vaping experience. With smoking many of the toxins and carcinogens are the product of the burning process. There is no burning taking place with vaping therefore no products of the burning process.
This is not to say that vaping is completely safe. It would be more accurate to say that vaping is safe enough: that it is safe to a level that there should be no concern to smokers switching to vaping products and safe enough for the general public not to worry about exposures to second-hand vapour.
Even with some of the identified harmful ingredients in e cigarette vapour, they are at such low levels that harm is hardly a consideration. There are metals given off by the heating coils and a great deal has been made of this by the media: but the stories are hype and sometimes pure nonsense.
for example… Toxic Heavy Metals Are Leaking From E-Cigarettes Into The Vapours, Study Shows
This laughable article is based in an equally laughable study. Here, is the claim that e cigarettes are, “touted as being a slightly healthier alternative to puffing on tobacco.” The bias is already showing after the first sentence.
Anyway…
The study conducted Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysed e-cigarette vapourisers borrowed from 56 daily vapers, and found many were being exposed to potentially toxic levels of chromium, nickel, and lead. Is that so? Study here… https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp2175 but before wasting your time reading it, read the following first…
The study was so badly flawed that eminent scientists and researchers felt the need to respond… Read about it in this Vaping Post article… Farsalinos about the presence of metals in e-liquids
more here… Response to Metal in Eliquid Aerosols Study from Johns Hopkins University – Eos Scientific
So much for metals, however, what about, particles?
I even had my doctor (a couple of years back) bring this up. She said that she would not want her children to be exposed to particulate matter from e cigarette vapour. I tried to put her right but she was, ‘too busy.’ Mind you I do tend to go on a bit so I do not really blame her.
The following deals with the topic. But I would not recommend reading it as it is pure garbage. I have only included it as an example of how the particulate argument goes – and to give the experienced readers a good laugh. https://no-smoke.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/electronic-smoking-devices-secondhand-aerosol.pdf
It deals with a whole range of stupid claims notwithstanding a section on metals from the above debunked research.
As for particles…
Clive Bates states, “The opponents of e-cigarettes have determined that ‘ultrafine particles’ or ‘particulates’ are an issue they can work with. But this campaigning gambit, it turns out, involves a crude scientific sleight of hand.” He takes the above mentioned article down… Here… Scientific sleight of hand: constructing concern about ‘particulates’ from e-cigarettes
Now, I have highlighted two major claims regarding vaping, claims which headlined all over the globe and yet the studies the claims are based on were, in the first instance, fatally flawed, and in the second, governed by ‘sleight of hand.’
And the same remains true for all studies (so far) which claim to have found evidence of real harm from vaping and vapour, whether from second-hand or direct exposure.
Best to listen to people like…
Public Health England
PHE publishes independent expert e-cigarettes evidence review
A final word on why there is so much effort being made to demonise vaping. What lies behind it… You will get an insight here…
Just to whet your appetite.
“Furthermore, using e-cigarettes as a case study, this paper demonstrates how this negative effect is magnified when health charities, federal health agencies, and state health departments are financially co-dependent. Though perceived as independent health charities, many of the nation’s most well-respected health non-profits are, in effect, arms of federal health agencies. Groups like the American Cancer Society (ACS) receive money from agencies, like the National Cancer Institute within the National Institutes of Health. As such, it is in ACS’ interest to support or even lobby on behalf of the National Cancer Institute as it seeks to sustain or increase the funding allocated to it in the federal budget.
In turn, health agencies like the National Cancer Institute have an incentive to boost the reputation of their supporting health charities like ACS. Not only can these charities provide strong support during budget discussions, by echoing or even executing the Institute’s efforts throughout the year, they can make the Institute appear more effective and therefore more worthy of budget allocation.
A similar process takes place at the state level, where state and local health departments “partner” with respected health charities like ACS, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association. The health departments divert funding to the charities, while the charities do what health departments cannot—lobby state and local governments.
These health charity-government agency alliances have proven so effective and lucrative that it has given rise to a vast, nationwide network of groups that includes government bodies at the local, state, federal and international level; charities; grassroots organizations; universities; and even scientists. While seemingly independent from one another, these entities are in fact deeply financially interwoven.
In the case of e-cigarettes, this interconnected network of health groups and advocates has helped fuel public fears about tobacco alternatives. To the general public, these disparate groups appear to have reached the same conclusion about the health effects of e-cigarettes independently of one another.”
