Good. These e-cigarettes are the worse thing to happen to health in a long time. Just as smoking rates started to decline, out come vapor cigarettes which are in some cases more dangerous (exploding in peoples faces). I've seen too many people "vaping" on buses and trains for something to not have been done about it.
It's all pretty ludicrous even on the surface. A lot of vaping proponents try to argue the relative safety of water vapor to smoke, but in the end it's still just a delivery method for various chemicals including nicotine. Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.
It's not water vapor, it's glycerin and propylene glycol, primarily.
You'd be right, except that the vapor condenses in seconds and the effect on others nearby is below the threshold of measurement, whereas secondhand smoke lingers for minutes or hours and is extremely measurably harmful to anyone in proximity of a smoker.
First, lots of people do have very real problems quitting caffeine. Second: the support groups and meds for quitting smoking are there because smoking actual cigarettes is harmful. Take the burning cigarette away and you're not very far from the situation we're in with caffeine.
Now imagine if every cup of your coffee came with a spoon of asbestos mixed with cadmium and radon powder.
The problem with nicotine and its addiction isn't the nicotine or the addiction itself - they are basically harmless, like coffee.
The problem is that typical nicotine delivery method - tobacco cigarette - causes people to inhale whole slew of carcinogenic chemicals. The vaping eliminates all those bad factors thus converting a very harmful habit into a habit of mild relaxation (basically the only effect of low levels of nicotine). The best one thing a government can do right now to improve health of the nation (and decrease Medicare expenses) in near future is to give away the e-cigs everywhere where tobacco is sold.
To the Wikipedia link in the comment below - with all the respect to Wikipedia, my link above is from John Hopkins.
There are big problems with addiction studies in general - in this case because needing a cup of coffee to start your day is considered just fine, whereas needing a drink to start your day is considered pathological.
Being grumpy because of lack of coffee is generally understood and sympathized with. Being grumpy because you haven't had a bump today is considered a cocaine problem and compulsive behavior.
There is so much socialization and stigma around various substances, that terms like compulsive and pathological are hard to use objectively.
I don't understand what this has to do with my point. Are bacon and eggs addictive too? I was merely pointing out that there are known difficulties with the wikipedia statement, because "addictive" "pathological" and "compulsive" are words that have a level of social acceptance built into them, and the same behaviors towards one substance are pathological, while they aren't in another.
Anything can be psychologically addictive with habitual use and what one might call an "addictive personality". Video games, work, porn, caffeine, bacon & eggs, all the same. Some of those things even have support groups, pills, patches, etc.
Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm. That's my argument, and even though every single comment I've made on this thread to that effect has been downvoted into the negatives, I don't care. Apparently that's the hill I'm dying on today, and I'm just fine with that.
This "nicotine is more addictive" concept is hard to understand for me. For the reasons I outline above. The timeline and severity of withdrawal symptoms aren't that different. The relapse to previous use levels isn't that different.
A huge factor in how "bad" each is however seems to be in the responses to relapse. There's disapproval in people's responses to someone taking up nicotine again, but if someone is back to drinking coffee, there's at most a "oh drinking coffee again bob?". These factors in the consequences regarding a slip up or relapse make it hard to judge how "addictive" something is independent of the socialization of it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
According to the above chart, tobacco, whose addictiveness is driven by nicotine, ranks above the following in dependence: meth, alcohol, steroids, ketamines, and barbiturates. It's only slightly trailing cocaine.
Caffeine isn't even on the chart, but even if that were due to "sociological perception", I've no doubt that it would be at the bottom-left of that chart.
Therefore the chart you link is not really that valid in terms of nicotine vs caffeine.
In fact - many people who switch from tobacco to vaping report that it is a difficult switch. Part of it is that the act of vaping isn't the act of smoking, and it's a habit replacement problem. But other parts of that can easily be explained by the MAOIs (more studies are required of course). The other thing reported often, by people who switch to vaping then successfully quit all nicotine is that it's easier to quit vaping than it is to quit tobacco directly - this is probably due to just nicotine vs nicotine+ in tobacco.
Finally - it is very hard to find studies on nicotine addiction independent of tobacco use. Seriously, until very recently, the way to get nicotine was via tobacco, so almost all claims about nicotine use are about tobacco use in general. The chemical pathways are understood, but the effects of just nicotine on long term dependence are all in the context of tobacco. Conversely the page on caffeine in wikipedia - under the heading "Reinforcement disorders" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Reinforcement_disorde... ) does discuss that the claims of caffeine not being addictive are pretty contested.
Basically your points about nicotine are not quite as solid as you claim.
>Anything can be psychologically addictive with habitual use and what one might call an "addictive personality". Video games, work, porn, caffeine, bacon & eggs, all the same. Some of those things even have support groups, pills, patches, etc.
>Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm.
You seems to have nor knowledge nor direct experience to talk from. Video games, HN/FB/email checking and nicotine - all cause neurotransmitter release. That's what makes them addictive. And video games or the Internet related activities seem to release more of the neurotransmitter (dopamine) and as result much more addictive than nicotine. People quit nicotine (i stopped smoking 13 years ago after a decade of enjoying pack-a-day and i think all this "nicotine addiction" is almost non-existent thing, a scarecrow elephant that tobacco companies inflated out of a small fly to scare people from quitting) while people can't quit video games or the other Internet related activities once they got hooked up on it, ie. once the addiction got developed by establishing stimuli->dopamine reward cycle in the brain for that specific stimuli like the video game or HN comments.
I watched my dad try and fail half a dozen times to quit smoking over twenty years, and the thought that nicotine addiction is a myth perpetuated by Big Tobacco is so frankly ridiculous that I can't believe I'm dignifying it with a response. That, coupled with your claim that you were a pack-a-day smoker for a decade that apparently quit with relative ease, means that your mind is so apparently alien from the natural human condition that I honestly have no idea how to reason with you because I cannot even imagine what you would consider "reason" to be.
>"Skin: In case of contact, flush skin with plenty of water."
>"Inhalation: If inhaled, remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration."
I remember in the mid-1990's, there were many articles pointing the finger at propylene glycol in personal care products for increasing cancer rates. Even to this day I use Thai salt for deodorant as I don't want to be slathering propylene glycol all over me.
I quick google search for 'propylene glycol' doesn't turn up too much for health risks. But still, I don't want the stuff touching, and I wouldn't want it in my lungs either....
Edit: and to the down voters, I am not anti-vape or anti tobacco. I think both are pretty cool. But as a neat freak, I don't want all my stuff smelling like smoke. And as a health conscious person, I don't want my last days on this earth ending with me on a hospital bed gasping for air from a failed respiratory system.
Why did you quote the generic 'first aid measures' section? The 'health effects' section is far less alarming:
>Skin: May be absorbed through damaged or abraded skin in harmful amounts. Allergic reactions have been reported. A single prolonged skin exposure is not likely to result in the material being absorbed in harmful amounts. Prolonged contact is essentially non-irritating to skin. Repeated exposures may cause problems. Negative results have consistently been obtained in guinea pigs studies for sensitization. 1,2-Propylene glycol is not considered an occupational skin sensitizer. (CHEMINFO)
>Inhalation: Low hazard for usual industrial handling. Inhalation of a mist of this material may cause respiratory tract irritation. Material has a low vapor pressure at room temperature, so exposure to vapor is not likely.
I will give you that, but you also must admit that there is also a chance that since you didn't notice any bad effects it is OK and your fear isn't really justified.
>. A lot of vaping proponents try to argue the relative safety of water vapor to smoke, but in the end it's still just a delivery method for various chemicals including nicotine.
and so the coffee for caffeine
>Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.
Bullshit. Vaping is tremendously less harmful than smoking, both to the user themselves, and more importantly to the people around them that are not being subjected to secondhand smoke.
Vapor condenses very quickly, and the secondhand effects are below the threshold of measurement. This is a marked difference from smoking.
I'm getting the impression you haven't done any research about this, though, and are just ranting.
PS: Smoking kills 50% of its users. What percentage of vapers have had their equipment blow up in their face? (Hint: it's not 1%.)
Did you really just suggest that the risk of an e-cigarette exploding is comparable to the risk of heart disease, emphysema, and cancer from smoking actual cigarettes?
I feel comfortable with that comparison, yes. Neither nicotine nor caffeine are carcinogenic. Both are CVD risks in the quantities consumed by addicts; nicotine probably more so, but caffeine has other bad effects on GI health.
Downthread, you suggested you were unfamiliar with the notion of having a week of migraines from quitting coffee. I think what's happening here is that you're not very familiar with the downsides of serious coffee/caffeine habits, and that's why the comparison seems silly to you.
I'm aware that caffeine can be psychologically addictive (just as anything habitual can be) and that there are physical withdrawal symptoms for some heavy users, but those symptoms last only around a week.
Ultimately, anybody can choose to stop drinking coffee at any time. I know people who have tried to make that choice with nicotine and failed repeatedly.
Ultimately, anybody can choose to stop drinking coffee at any time.
I've seriously attempted to quit intake of caffeine about 6-8 times over the last 2 decades. In each case, I was able to temporarily quit, with withdrawal symptoms being more in the 2-4 week range. However, in each case, a small amount of caffeine at a casual event lead to intake of "normal" (for me) amounts of caffeine immediately. I would love to quit it (as I understand it's health consequences).
As a reference, I would say that I would be in the "heavy users" category with a daily intake of about 750-1000mg.
That is arguably (by at least one Johns Hopkins professor [1]) a purely psychological response. Anything can become psychologically addictive with habitual use, but that doesn't make it a substantively addictive substance. You could practically equate it to "porn addiction" in that sense.
The article you linked to does not say that the Griffiths claims caffeine dependence is "purely psychological" in the sense that you appear to be using it as an opposite of physical dependence. The article states that Griffiths thinks that caffeine dependence should be considered a psychological disorder, like other substance addictions.
If you look at the sources the Wikipedia articles cites for its mentions of Griffiths, the National Geographic article compares caffeine addiction to heroin addiction and attributes to Griffiths a claim that as little as half a cup of coffee a day can produce physical dependence. The paper appears to agree, from the information in the abstract.
Here's my experienced-based concern about vaping. I've spent a lot of time in a medicinal/organic chemistry synthesis labs. During which I have often been around synthetic set-ups involving drawing smaller organic compounds over heated metal, (sometimes specifically catalytic), elements in order to render them reactive for the next synthetic step. Oftentimes the assumption is that an intermediate free-radical is thereby generated. Vaping juice has a variety of (poorly regulated) smaller organic solvent and flavor-ant compounds in it, which are drawn over a heated metal element. Free radicals are often implicated as carcinogenic. Of course, i have no clinical data; but you can at least see where my concern comes from.
Most of the flavorings in vaping juice are just the stuff that's added to food for the same flavors. In fact, most of it is sold to be used in food products. Some exotic flavors differ, but mostly its just food flavorings. So how does this differ from using flavored oils in a cooking pan?
How does it differ? Well, for one thing you're not specifically repeatedly drawing the vapor from your cooking pan into your lungs; one hopes. For another the oil itself is not generally consumed but left behind after the cooking is done. Or so I gather, i'm no cook, but if oil cooking is done correctly hardly any of the oil remains on the food. Then there are some notable differences between a bit of food which is able to boil off its water content (keeping its own mass from getting to any ionization point) versus a tiny air-borne droplet of glycol or whatever. Anyway, i'd tend to wait at least a decade or so before the research was in. Just think how many years of tobacco smoking was going on before publicly declared a health hazard.
I dislike smoking and e-cigs, but by any accounting, e-cigs greatly benefit public health. Vaping is far less harmful than smoking tobacco, and around 70% of vapers are former smokers. When you plug in reasonable numbers for smoking vs vaping deaths[1]:
> ...if a public e-cigarette ban reduces the number of smokers who switch to e-cigarettes by 2%, you’ve just killed an extra 9000 people per year...
So if anything, e-cigs should be subsidized, not banned.
Actually they are massively safer than tobacco cigarettes - around 95% less harmful[0]. At the moment there is no evidence that they act as a stepping stone to cigarettes (and some indication that they don't). So converting smokers to vapers could do a lot to reduce the huge harm done by tobacco.
I agree I'd rather not sit next to someone using one on a train but I'd also rather not sit next to someone eating strong smelling food.
As some one who uses an eCig I wouldn't put much faith into the claims of X% less harmful because we don't know yet.
There's just too much crap going on as the scene exploded in the past 2 years I know some people that spend more time engineering their "coils" than what JPL spends on designing mars rovers and vape at with devices that look like a battery pack of a T1000 at like 150W.
No one can estimate the current effects of the oily residue in the lungs, the interactions with the flavoring, and other components, as well as the effects of in taking heated vapor, possible metal deposition and what ever wicking media is uses (silicon, cotton, other fibers).
Although it appears to be safer because you don't intake tar and the 100000's compounds in a cigarette it could end up being just as much of a health risk for a plethora of other reasons.
So it will probably take several decades until we can begin to asses the actual health impact, and considering how many variations of possible variables (liquid base, nicotine level, nicotine source, flavor base, flavor components, wattage, coil type, wick material etc.) are there it might not be a clear cut case either.
And I also hate people that "vape" in confined spaces such as trains, luckily in the UK most places put on signs that do not allow you to vape anymore, I've been seeing people do that in the movies and that's probably the most annoying thing to see as the clouds of smoke constantly catch the light from the projector.
Vaping should be treated as smoking as far as other people go if you are with some one that would not want you to smoke near them do not vape near them, having separate vaping areas might come in the future but I don't expect to see that anytime soon, sadly the place that is affected the most is the airport, especially those with the "phone booth" style smoke areas which I couldn't stand to enter even when I was smoking.
I see the spirit of Andrew Volstead is still alive and well after all these years. Frankly, I don't care what people smoke, or how they choose to smoke it. I also don't care what they choose to read, or what they choose to drink.
I vaped for over a year starting last summer. Over that year I was able to gradually decrease the amount of nicotine in my juice. A few months back I switched to nicotine free juice (Which oddly enough, is exactly the same thing as a fog machine..which I don't really see anyone complaining about.) Anyways I haven't vaped for a month now.. and don't really feel the need to. Bottom line is vaping allowed me to quit smoking and it only cost me half my face. Of course I am just kidding about the half a face thing.... "exploding in peoples faces" ,LOL!! ...let's ban swimming because of shark attacks!
This is so fucking stupid. People aren't going to give up their nicotine addictions; giving them a cheap and convenient alternative that is many orders of magnitude safer for themselves and their families than smoking is the single best outcome that could happen.
It's really simple: Make vaping less accessible, continue to destroy the lungs of children and others with secondhand smoke.
Exactly. I switched from smoking to vaping a few months back, and I haven't looked back. My lungs don't hurt when I wake up in the morning, I don't smell like cigarettes all the time, and my landlord has, based on some industry research or something, decided to let me vape inside.
I'm always trying to cut back and quit, but I'll switch right back to smokes if I can't vape.
This "grandfather" date is so dumb and such obvious pandering to an existing large business faction: this kind of law should apply to everything and everyone. "We now require all food to be tested for contamination with [insert newly understood poison here], unless it was marketed before we discovered the poison... in that case, have fun!" :/
Vaping is clearly less harmful than cigarette smoking, and shifting from cigarettes to vaping is a great move. But somehow the most gullible vapers have convinced themselves that vaping is utterly harmless, and they should be able to do it everywhere the way they did when omnipresent secondhand smoke was taken for granted. So we get all this clear propaganda about how harmless it is, and how the nonsmokers are bunch of unreasonable fascists for not letting people do it all over the place.
false dilemma (n): a type of informal fallacy that involves a situation in which only limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option.
Why would my choice be standing next to a smoker vs standing next to a vaper? In my day-to-day life, none of my family, friends, nor co-workers smoke or vape around me at all.
I really hope regulations don't go that as far as this article describes. I realize that formal review of drug delivery products are important for safety, but the deadlines they're imposing will hurt what vaping has done for public air quality.
I don't vape, but I wish that everyone who smoked in public spaces would just switch to vaping because of how much better it is on everybody around them.
There's a way to getting to what regulators want, but demanding things happen on a timeline that not even they can keep up with is ridiculous and needs to be rethought.
>I realize that formal review of drug delivery products are important for safety
Can we be certain of that? How do we define safety? The FDA focuses on ensuring that no one is harmed by the use of a product, but they pay very little attention to those who are harmed by the lack of access to a product. The institutional incentives that exist encourage this conservative approach to drug access.
There are also many forms of regulation outside of governmental regulation. No bureau is needed to verify the quality of my Uber driver, but they still tend to be better than most taxis I've ever taken. 10 years ago you could have said "formal review of taxi drivers is important for safety" and most people would have agreed with you, but fortunately some entrepreneurs realized there was a better form of regulating driver quality.
People thinks it's ok to blow those things in your face or near people.
It's basically spitting to me.
I also think Vape is bad for you and is up there with smoking. Just cause it less bad than smoking doesn't mean it's not harmless, it's just an excuse to not quit a harmful habit.
It's a free country but still I wish they can't vape in certain area or have a designated area so they can vape.
Dude you are not helping anyone here. This kind of tortured logic and aggression does nothing to improve the public perception that vapers are completely out of tune with the desires of those around them.
Full Disclosure: Vaper for 2 years & counting, I take that shit outside and keep it out of people's face.
Vaper here. It's incredibly rude for someone to inflict their vape on you. I would support designated vaping areas similar or identical to designated smoking areas.
Your statement about exuses to not quit imply that you believe that quitting is easy, or even possible, for all smokers. This is certainly not the case. Studies have shown that it's easier to kick a heroine habit than it is to quit smoking.
Former smoker turned (former) vaper here. Not everyone who vapes is that inconsiderate, but I will acknowledge that there are many who subtly attempt to create confrontation by blowing it in peoples faces like it's no big deal. They want you to give them an excuse to rant about how "safe it is."
I'm not going to argue that it's healthy or harmless, but I can guarantee you that it is less harmful than smoking. After switching to a vape my cilia healed, I had better lung capacity, my gums stopped swelling, and my sense of smell and taste returned to normal. Vaping also allows you to control the amount of nicotine you consume, so you can slowly decrease the amount and ween yourself off of it once and for all which is what I did.
This is a big public health issue. E-cigs are one of the most effective methods for quitting altogether and they're about to ban it; that should be an outrage.
From articles and interviews about the health effects of vaping, I've gathered that there are basically two distinct groups of people: 1) ordinary people, who hold views ranging from skepticism to enthusiasm, and 2) anti-smoking activists who are sure that vaping is as bad as smoking, no matter what.
The extreme anti-tobacco people don't believe in harm reduction. They also battle snus, which is far healthier than smoking and is probably far less harmful than other forms of "chewing tobacco" due to the way it's processed. Rather than seeing fewer health problems from tobacco related products, these people would will stand on principle while people continue to smoke.
A lot of people get this idea of "poison, therefore avoid at all costs" in their head about a lot of things. For instance, my local makerspace does a "teach people to solder" table at public events to get folks into making things. So many parents upon learning that solder has lead, decide to take their kids away, because lead will probably kill them right now. Several times they have tried to get us shut down because we have lead.
It doesn't make it ok, just how some people seem to think.
This mentality is also present with food. "Genetically modified food is bad because the word genetic is dirty and I don't know what it means, even though every type of food ever has been genetically modified! Won't someone think of the children!?!"
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] threadYou'd be right, except that the vapor condenses in seconds and the effect on others nearby is below the threshold of measurement, whereas secondhand smoke lingers for minutes or hours and is extremely measurably harmful to anyone in proximity of a smoker.
Nicotine itself isn't that harmful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
* http://caffeine.supportgroups.com/
* http://articles.latimes.com/1995-02-06/news/ls-28802_1_coffe...
* http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/caffeineaddicts
Personally, I'm all for anything that reasonably reduces risk and improves health care outcomes.
the same is for caffeine, addiction hits at very low level of consumption :
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/BPRU/docs...
Now imagine if every cup of your coffee came with a spoon of asbestos mixed with cadmium and radon powder.
The problem with nicotine and its addiction isn't the nicotine or the addiction itself - they are basically harmless, like coffee.
The problem is that typical nicotine delivery method - tobacco cigarette - causes people to inhale whole slew of carcinogenic chemicals. The vaping eliminates all those bad factors thus converting a very harmful habit into a habit of mild relaxation (basically the only effect of low levels of nicotine). The best one thing a government can do right now to improve health of the nation (and decrease Medicare expenses) in near future is to give away the e-cigs everywhere where tobacco is sold.
To the Wikipedia link in the comment below - with all the respect to Wikipedia, my link above is from John Hopkins.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
Being grumpy because of lack of coffee is generally understood and sympathized with. Being grumpy because you haven't had a bump today is considered a cocaine problem and compulsive behavior.
There is so much socialization and stigma around various substances, that terms like compulsive and pathological are hard to use objectively.
Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm. That's my argument, and even though every single comment I've made on this thread to that effect has been downvoted into the negatives, I don't care. Apparently that's the hill I'm dying on today, and I'm just fine with that.
A huge factor in how "bad" each is however seems to be in the responses to relapse. There's disapproval in people's responses to someone taking up nicotine again, but if someone is back to drinking coffee, there's at most a "oh drinking coffee again bob?". These factors in the consequences regarding a slip up or relapse make it hard to judge how "addictive" something is independent of the socialization of it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
According to the above chart, tobacco, whose addictiveness is driven by nicotine, ranks above the following in dependence: meth, alcohol, steroids, ketamines, and barbiturates. It's only slightly trailing cocaine.
Caffeine isn't even on the chart, but even if that were due to "sociological perception", I've no doubt that it would be at the bottom-left of that chart.
Further, while the addictiveness of tobacco is primarily driven by nicotine, it is enhanced by MAOIs in tobacco as well by other substances: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/toba...
Therefore the chart you link is not really that valid in terms of nicotine vs caffeine.
In fact - many people who switch from tobacco to vaping report that it is a difficult switch. Part of it is that the act of vaping isn't the act of smoking, and it's a habit replacement problem. But other parts of that can easily be explained by the MAOIs (more studies are required of course). The other thing reported often, by people who switch to vaping then successfully quit all nicotine is that it's easier to quit vaping than it is to quit tobacco directly - this is probably due to just nicotine vs nicotine+ in tobacco.
Finally - it is very hard to find studies on nicotine addiction independent of tobacco use. Seriously, until very recently, the way to get nicotine was via tobacco, so almost all claims about nicotine use are about tobacco use in general. The chemical pathways are understood, but the effects of just nicotine on long term dependence are all in the context of tobacco. Conversely the page on caffeine in wikipedia - under the heading "Reinforcement disorders" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Reinforcement_disorde... ) does discuss that the claims of caffeine not being addictive are pretty contested.
Basically your points about nicotine are not quite as solid as you claim.
>Nicotine is addictive on a scale far beyond that. Comparing caffeine and nicotine is like comparing nerf and 9mm.
You seems to have nor knowledge nor direct experience to talk from. Video games, HN/FB/email checking and nicotine - all cause neurotransmitter release. That's what makes them addictive. And video games or the Internet related activities seem to release more of the neurotransmitter (dopamine) and as result much more addictive than nicotine. People quit nicotine (i stopped smoking 13 years ago after a decade of enjoying pack-a-day and i think all this "nicotine addiction" is almost non-existent thing, a scarecrow elephant that tobacco companies inflated out of a small fly to scare people from quitting) while people can't quit video games or the other Internet related activities once they got hooked up on it, ie. once the addiction got developed by establishing stimuli->dopamine reward cycle in the brain for that specific stimuli like the video game or HN comments.
>"Skin: In case of contact, flush skin with plenty of water."
>"Inhalation: If inhaled, remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration."
I remember in the mid-1990's, there were many articles pointing the finger at propylene glycol in personal care products for increasing cancer rates. Even to this day I use Thai salt for deodorant as I don't want to be slathering propylene glycol all over me.
I quick google search for 'propylene glycol' doesn't turn up too much for health risks. But still, I don't want the stuff touching, and I wouldn't want it in my lungs either....
Edit: and to the down voters, I am not anti-vape or anti tobacco. I think both are pretty cool. But as a neat freak, I don't want all my stuff smelling like smoke. And as a health conscious person, I don't want my last days on this earth ending with me on a hospital bed gasping for air from a failed respiratory system.
>Skin: May be absorbed through damaged or abraded skin in harmful amounts. Allergic reactions have been reported. A single prolonged skin exposure is not likely to result in the material being absorbed in harmful amounts. Prolonged contact is essentially non-irritating to skin. Repeated exposures may cause problems. Negative results have consistently been obtained in guinea pigs studies for sensitization. 1,2-Propylene glycol is not considered an occupational skin sensitizer. (CHEMINFO)
>Inhalation: Low hazard for usual industrial handling. Inhalation of a mist of this material may cause respiratory tract irritation. Material has a low vapor pressure at room temperature, so exposure to vapor is not likely.
"Inhalation: Low hazard for usual industrial handling." <- Industrial handling probably doesn't include smoking it....
and so the coffee for caffeine
>Not to mention the vapor is just as obnoxious as smoke.
and so the vapor from your hot coffee.
Vapor condenses very quickly, and the secondhand effects are below the threshold of measurement. This is a marked difference from smoking.
I'm getting the impression you haven't done any research about this, though, and are just ranting.
PS: Smoking kills 50% of its users. What percentage of vapers have had their equipment blow up in their face? (Hint: it's not 1%.)
Downthread, you suggested you were unfamiliar with the notion of having a week of migraines from quitting coffee. I think what's happening here is that you're not very familiar with the downsides of serious coffee/caffeine habits, and that's why the comparison seems silly to you.
I don't think it's a silly comparison.
Ultimately, anybody can choose to stop drinking coffee at any time. I know people who have tried to make that choice with nicotine and failed repeatedly.
I've seriously attempted to quit intake of caffeine about 6-8 times over the last 2 decades. In each case, I was able to temporarily quit, with withdrawal symptoms being more in the 2-4 week range. However, in each case, a small amount of caffeine at a casual event lead to intake of "normal" (for me) amounts of caffeine immediately. I would love to quit it (as I understand it's health consequences).
As a reference, I would say that I would be in the "heavy users" category with a daily intake of about 750-1000mg.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence
If you look at the sources the Wikipedia articles cites for its mentions of Griffiths, the National Geographic article compares caffeine addiction to heroin addiction and attributes to Griffiths a claim that as little as half a cup of coffee a day can produce physical dependence. The paper appears to agree, from the information in the abstract.
> ...if a public e-cigarette ban reduces the number of smokers who switch to e-cigarettes by 2%, you’ve just killed an extra 9000 people per year...
So if anything, e-cigs should be subsidized, not banned.
1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/28/thank-you-for-doing-som...
I agree I'd rather not sit next to someone using one on a train but I'd also rather not sit next to someone eating strong smelling food.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-an-e...
So it will probably take several decades until we can begin to asses the actual health impact, and considering how many variations of possible variables (liquid base, nicotine level, nicotine source, flavor base, flavor components, wattage, coil type, wick material etc.) are there it might not be a clear cut case either.
And I also hate people that "vape" in confined spaces such as trains, luckily in the UK most places put on signs that do not allow you to vape anymore, I've been seeing people do that in the movies and that's probably the most annoying thing to see as the clouds of smoke constantly catch the light from the projector. Vaping should be treated as smoking as far as other people go if you are with some one that would not want you to smoke near them do not vape near them, having separate vaping areas might come in the future but I don't expect to see that anytime soon, sadly the place that is affected the most is the airport, especially those with the "phone booth" style smoke areas which I couldn't stand to enter even when I was smoking.
It's really simple: Make vaping less accessible, continue to destroy the lungs of children and others with secondhand smoke.
I'm always trying to cut back and quit, but I'll switch right back to smokes if I can't vape.
Would you rather breath next to a tail pipe of a running car? Or next to someone puffing on a vaporizer?
I don't vape, but I wish that everyone who smoked in public spaces would just switch to vaping because of how much better it is on everybody around them.
There's a way to getting to what regulators want, but demanding things happen on a timeline that not even they can keep up with is ridiculous and needs to be rethought.
Can we be certain of that? How do we define safety? The FDA focuses on ensuring that no one is harmed by the use of a product, but they pay very little attention to those who are harmed by the lack of access to a product. The institutional incentives that exist encourage this conservative approach to drug access.
There are also many forms of regulation outside of governmental regulation. No bureau is needed to verify the quality of my Uber driver, but they still tend to be better than most taxis I've ever taken. 10 years ago you could have said "formal review of taxi drivers is important for safety" and most people would have agreed with you, but fortunately some entrepreneurs realized there was a better form of regulating driver quality.
People thinks it's ok to blow those things in your face or near people.
It's basically spitting to me.
I also think Vape is bad for you and is up there with smoking. Just cause it less bad than smoking doesn't mean it's not harmless, it's just an excuse to not quit a harmful habit.
It's a free country but still I wish they can't vape in certain area or have a designated area so they can vape.
I'd rather take a puff of someones second hand vaporizer smoke then to breath in the shit that comes out of your tail pipe.
Full Disclosure: Vaper for 2 years & counting, I take that shit outside and keep it out of people's face.
Your statement about exuses to not quit imply that you believe that quitting is easy, or even possible, for all smokers. This is certainly not the case. Studies have shown that it's easier to kick a heroine habit than it is to quit smoking.
I'm not going to argue that it's healthy or harmless, but I can guarantee you that it is less harmful than smoking. After switching to a vape my cilia healed, I had better lung capacity, my gums stopped swelling, and my sense of smell and taste returned to normal. Vaping also allows you to control the amount of nicotine you consume, so you can slowly decrease the amount and ween yourself off of it once and for all which is what I did.
This is a big public health issue. E-cigs are one of the most effective methods for quitting altogether and they're about to ban it; that should be an outrage.
The extreme anti-tobacco people don't believe in harm reduction. They also battle snus, which is far healthier than smoking and is probably far less harmful than other forms of "chewing tobacco" due to the way it's processed. Rather than seeing fewer health problems from tobacco related products, these people would will stand on principle while people continue to smoke.
It doesn't make it ok, just how some people seem to think.