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Vapes have been widely positioned as a healthier alternative to the cigarettes that are firmly linked to a plethora of health risks. However, you may not be doing yourself any favors if you opt for the tobacco-free option based on the eye-opening results of a study that took a look at what you’re actually inhaling.
It’s hard to imagine there are many—if any—people who aren’t aware of the downsides that come with smoking cigarettes, as every pack you buy is emblazoned with warnings concerning the links between smoking, emphysema, and other lung diseases that tobacco companies spent decades attempting to suppress before the reality became possible to ignore.
You may be surprised to learn that the idea of an electronic cigarette was first dreamed up by an American inventor in the 1960s, but that concept didn’t really become a reality until the start of the new millennium.
The early iterations of e-cigs paved the way for the nicotine vapes that ended up thrust into the mainstream after Juul took the world by storm in the 2010s, and while that brand may be a shell of its former self, it was responsible for opening the door to the wide variety of disposable devices that tend to be in ample supply at smoke shops, gas stations, and conveninece stores.
Plenty of people turned to vaping in order to wean themselves off of cigarettes, and while most medical experts seem to agree it’s a healthier alternative, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests blowing fat clouds on a regular basis isn’t even close to harmless.
That’s less than ideal when you consider vapes have also managed to hook plenty of people who weren’t chiefing darts before they decided to take the plunge, and there’s still plenty of research to be done when it comes to determining the long-term consequences linked to a vice that’s still in its relative infancy.
According to a study that was recently published in the journal ACS Central Science, you might want to think twice before hitting some of the disposable vapes that were examined by researchers associated with the Department of Environmental Toxicology at UC Davis.
Mark Salazar, a Ph.D candidate at the school, said he was inspired to test the contents of a vape a friend was using before bringing it back to the lab and testing it to screen for potentially dangerous substance only to be greeted by an unexpected surprise, saying, “When I first saw the lead concentrations, they were so high I thought our instrument was broken.”
That led to a formal study that examined five disposable vapes produced by three popular brands and discovered they contained “surprisingly high concentrations” of not only that element but other toxic metals.
The paper notes that the levels of chromium, nickel, and antimony detected in the vapor increased as the amount of liquid in the vapes decreased due to puffing.
It also found that the amount of nickel and antimony emitted by three of the devices surpassed the cancer risk threshold, and four of them eventually produced enough lead and nickel after prolonged use to trigger red flags linked to potential neurological and respiratory damage.
That certainly seems less than ideal.