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> far less damaging E-cigarette vapor disables key immune cells in the lung and boosts inflammation: Effects similar to those seen in regular smokers and patie

> far less damaging E-cigarette vapor disables key immune cells in the lung and boosts inflammation: Effects similar to those seen in regular smokers and patients with chronic lung disease. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180813190148.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180813190148.h... E-cigs shut down hundreds of immune system genes—regular cigs don’t https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/e-cigs-shut-down-hundreds-of-immune-system-genes-regular-cigs-dont/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/e-cigs-shut-down-hun... Widely used e-cigarette flavoring impairs lung function https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180523172310.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180523172310.h... It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty. Realistically, we're probably going to find out through long-term longitudinal studies in a few decades.

jf- 8y ago
> It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty. No, it isn't. Tobacco contains 70 known human carcinogens and is known to directly cause lung cancer. No one is claiming that vaping causes cancer. The possibility that's being raised is that after decades of use vaping may cause lung disease. I know which is worse. And importantly, as you say, the matter in unsettled and it is just as likely that it does not. Is your point that it should be pre-emptively banned, just in case?
- clumsysmurf 8y ago
  > No one is claiming that vaping causes cancer "To evaluate possible long-term effects of vaping, the team assessed DNA damage in the cells of the volunteers' mouths." "Dator and Balbo identified three DNA-damaging compounds, formaldehyde, acrolein and methylglyoxal, whose levels increased in the saliva after vaping." "Compared with people who don't vape, four of the five e-cigarette users showed increased DNA damage related to acrolein exposure." "E-cigarettes can damage DNA" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-e-cigarettes-dna.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-e-cigarettes-dna.html
  - jf- 8y ago
    Did you forget to include the quote where they claim it causes cancer, or did you not include it because it doesn't exist? You're trying to imply something you have no evidence for.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      DNA damage is close enough to cancer for that to be a relevant response. For example, it's completely accepted that radiation causes cancer at the organism level. The mechanism by which it does so is that, at the raw physical level, radiation causes random DNA damage.
      - jf- 8y ago
        No, it isn’t. That’s why things are tested for carcinogenicity rather than DNA damage before being called carcinogens.
        thaumasiotes 8y ago
        There are other ways of being carcinogenic, which testing for carcinogenicity will automatically check. But DNA damage will do the trick. There should be an obvious logical difference in your mind between "DNA damage causes cancer" and "all cancer is caused by DNA damage". If you want to know whether something is a carcinogen, checking whether it causes DNA damage is not enough for you to conclude "no". But it may be enough for you to conclude "yes".
        jf- 8y ago
        I think I’ll hold out for something firmer than your interpretation of a study conducted on five people.
  - bb88 8y ago
    The sun damages DNA, as does background radiation. Basically living is the number one cause of damaging DNA. But the thing is the cells can usually repair the damage on their own. While being skeptical of the claim that vaping is healthy is a tenable position, your arguments lack honesty.
vonseel 8y ago
The article from sciencedaily does make you wonder, if one chemical is found to have problems and they replace it, then the next one is found to have issues and they replace that, is there really anything that can be vaped which doesn’t affect various respiratory systems poorly? Maybe flavorless water vapor. I’d suspect there is a line where negative outcome has to be drawn, as in “doing this is certainly bad and you will almost surely get sick” versus “continued use over many years results in at least 1/3 of users developing lung problems or diseases related to usage”.
__blockcipher__ 8y ago
Unpopular opinion: you shouldn’t be allowes to link studies the way you did without contexualizing them. The first study was in vitro, not in vivo. They exposed petri dishes to massive quantities of condensate. Based off the headline/intro I thought they were going to demonstrate that inhaled ejuice leads to macropahges being disabled (which would be very bad). That’s not the case however. FWIW, I don’t think vaping is harmless to the lungs. I do think it’s an order of magnitude better than smoked tobacco. Personally, I never smoked tobacco seriously (took occasional hits of a cigarette while drunk and that was it). Meanwhile friends of mine would smoke tobacco out of a bong 10-12 times a day. (One of the craziest sights ever to see someone smoke so much tobacco at once that they lose muscular function for 60 secs). OTOH, I did become dependent on vaporizing nicotine. So please don’t think I’m saying there’s no harm of addiction/damage etc. But let’s please actually analyze the scientific studies from a critical perspective rather than link dropping to make an argument look more well founded than it is
- mosselman 8y ago
  > Unpopular opinion: you shouldn’t be allowes to link studies the way you did without contexualizing them. Ehm, but you should be ‘allowed’ to post source-less claims like the parent did?!?
zethraeus 8y ago
> It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty Public Health England, which informs NHS policy estimates vaping is 95% less bad for your health than smoking cigarettes. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733022/Ecigarettes_an_evidence_update_A_report_commissioned_by_Public_Health_England_FINAL.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... I acknowledge that this is an appeal to authority, and that there's valuable research still to be done. But, cigarettes are one of the worst possible things that people habitually do to their bodies. It's reasonable that it wouldn't be hard to do a lot better. I think it's fair to describe the NHS's public health arm as a decently conservative organization. Public health is a conservative practice after all, and they're decent at it. I read these numbers in that light. > 'Some flavourings and constituents in e-cigarettes may pose risks over the long term. We consider the 5% residual risk to be a cautious estimate allowing for this uncertainty.' https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/456704/McNeill-Hajek_report_authors_note_on_evidence_for_95_estimate.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- hopler 8y ago
  What does "5% as harmful mean" when users are comsuming 20x as much because puffing a vape is as easy as checking a text message on your watch? One vape pod is a pack of cigarettes, with no barrier to puffing. Kids can't smoke cigarettes all day long in school. They can vape all day long in school, and some do, limited only by availability of money.
  - zethraeus 8y ago
    I don’t vape and don’t really know common vaping patterns. I will point out, though, that cigarettes aren’t really subdivisble, and humans are remis to waste. W/r/t definition, the second linked pdf makes reference to measured composition of known bads in vapour:smoke and asserts the ratio is smaller than 1:20. Also refers you to the preexisting literature. https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220 https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220 That paper defines harms as a combination of health and social factors, with a large weighting towards morbidity.
nugga 8y ago
The real issue here is likely the diluting mixtures containing glycol and glycerin and whatever else that may be non-benign when vaporized and entering into your lungs in large concentrations and not nicotine itself. Vaporizing by definition does not combust so there is no harmful irritating and inflammation causing smoke (although my vaporizer allows the temp to go so high as to start to combust weed, up to 260 celsius) so it would stand to reason it has to be safer on its own, especially if you remove from cigarette tobacco all toxic chemicals like polonium and others like MAOIs that supposedly boost the addictive potential and all you're left is pure nicotine. There is also snus or those small tobacco pouches you put under your lip but I recall hearing about them causing gum damage etc so even that may be more harmful than vaping. Tobacco (and snus) also have the littering problem. People throw away more or less non degradable garbage on the streets all day every day. I wonder how much big tobacco (excluding Altria now that they're in the vape game) lobbies against vaping because it eats into their profits? I wonder how much big pharma lobbies against vaping because it eats into their profits. It is not cool that likely the safest way to ingest nicotine is also likely the most expensive (gum, patches, etc). And these people have the audacity to fight vaping in order for it to be either _smoked_ tobacco or their extremely expensive pharma products. Surely vaping is the lesser evil compared to smoking and society should allow it OR remove tobacco overnight. Otherwise it seems weird and illogical. (I don't know if removing all external chemical catalysts from society is what should happen.)

jf- 8y ago

> It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty. No, it isn't. Tobacco contains 70 known human carcinogens and is known to directly cause lung cancer. No one is claiming that vaping causes cancer. The possibility that's being raised is that after decades of use vaping may cause lung disease. I know which is worse. And importantly, as you say, the matter in unsettled and it is just as likely that it does not. Is your point that it should be pre-emptively banned, just in case?

clumsysmurf 8y ago
> No one is claiming that vaping causes cancer "To evaluate possible long-term effects of vaping, the team assessed DNA damage in the cells of the volunteers' mouths." "Dator and Balbo identified three DNA-damaging compounds, formaldehyde, acrolein and methylglyoxal, whose levels increased in the saliva after vaping." "Compared with people who don't vape, four of the five e-cigarette users showed increased DNA damage related to acrolein exposure." "E-cigarettes can damage DNA" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-e-cigarettes-dna.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-e-cigarettes-dna.html
- jf- 8y ago
  Did you forget to include the quote where they claim it causes cancer, or did you not include it because it doesn't exist? You're trying to imply something you have no evidence for.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    DNA damage is close enough to cancer for that to be a relevant response. For example, it's completely accepted that radiation causes cancer at the organism level. The mechanism by which it does so is that, at the raw physical level, radiation causes random DNA damage.
    - jf- 8y ago
      No, it isn’t. That’s why things are tested for carcinogenicity rather than DNA damage before being called carcinogens.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        There are other ways of being carcinogenic, which testing for carcinogenicity will automatically check. But DNA damage will do the trick. There should be an obvious logical difference in your mind between "DNA damage causes cancer" and "all cancer is caused by DNA damage". If you want to know whether something is a carcinogen, checking whether it causes DNA damage is not enough for you to conclude "no". But it may be enough for you to conclude "yes".
        jf- 8y ago
        I think I’ll hold out for something firmer than your interpretation of a study conducted on five people.
- bb88 8y ago
  The sun damages DNA, as does background radiation. Basically living is the number one cause of damaging DNA. But the thing is the cells can usually repair the damage on their own. While being skeptical of the claim that vaping is healthy is a tenable position, your arguments lack honesty.

vonseel 8y ago

The article from sciencedaily does make you wonder, if one chemical is found to have problems and they replace it, then the next one is found to have issues and they replace that, is there really anything that can be vaped which doesn’t affect various respiratory systems poorly? Maybe flavorless water vapor. I’d suspect there is a line where negative outcome has to be drawn, as in “doing this is certainly bad and you will almost surely get sick” versus “continued use over many years results in at least 1/3 of users developing lung problems or diseases related to usage”.

__blockcipher__ 8y ago

Unpopular opinion: you shouldn’t be allowes to link studies the way you did without contexualizing them. The first study was in vitro, not in vivo. They exposed petri dishes to massive quantities of condensate. Based off the headline/intro I thought they were going to demonstrate that inhaled ejuice leads to macropahges being disabled (which would be very bad). That’s not the case however. FWIW, I don’t think vaping is harmless to the lungs. I do think it’s an order of magnitude better than smoked tobacco. Personally, I never smoked tobacco seriously (took occasional hits of a cigarette while drunk and that was it). Meanwhile friends of mine would smoke tobacco out of a bong 10-12 times a day. (One of the craziest sights ever to see someone smoke so much tobacco at once that they lose muscular function for 60 secs). OTOH, I did become dependent on vaporizing nicotine. So please don’t think I’m saying there’s no harm of addiction/damage etc. But let’s please actually analyze the scientific studies from a critical perspective rather than link dropping to make an argument look more well founded than it is

mosselman 8y ago
> Unpopular opinion: you shouldn’t be allowes to link studies the way you did without contexualizing them. Ehm, but you should be ‘allowed’ to post source-less claims like the parent did?!?

zethraeus 8y ago

> It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty Public Health England, which informs NHS policy estimates vaping is 95% less bad for your health than smoking cigarettes. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733022/Ecigarettes_an_evidence_update_A_report_commissioned_by_Public_Health_England_FINAL.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... I acknowledge that this is an appeal to authority, and that there's valuable research still to be done. But, cigarettes are one of the worst possible things that people habitually do to their bodies. It's reasonable that it wouldn't be hard to do a lot better. I think it's fair to describe the NHS's public health arm as a decently conservative organization. Public health is a conservative practice after all, and they're decent at it. I read these numbers in that light. > 'Some flavourings and constituents in e-cigarettes may pose risks over the long term. We consider the 5% residual risk to be a cautious estimate allowing for this uncertainty.' https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/456704/McNeill-Hajek_report_authors_note_on_evidence_for_95_estimate.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

hopler 8y ago
What does "5% as harmful mean" when users are comsuming 20x as much because puffing a vape is as easy as checking a text message on your watch? One vape pod is a pack of cigarettes, with no barrier to puffing. Kids can't smoke cigarettes all day long in school. They can vape all day long in school, and some do, limited only by availability of money.
- zethraeus 8y ago
  I don’t vape and don’t really know common vaping patterns. I will point out, though, that cigarettes aren’t really subdivisble, and humans are remis to waste. W/r/t definition, the second linked pdf makes reference to measured composition of known bads in vapour:smoke and asserts the ratio is smaller than 1:20. Also refers you to the preexisting literature. https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220 https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220 That paper defines harms as a combination of health and social factors, with a large weighting towards morbidity.

nugga 8y ago

The real issue here is likely the diluting mixtures containing glycol and glycerin and whatever else that may be non-benign when vaporized and entering into your lungs in large concentrations and not nicotine itself. Vaporizing by definition does not combust so there is no harmful irritating and inflammation causing smoke (although my vaporizer allows the temp to go so high as to start to combust weed, up to 260 celsius) so it would stand to reason it has to be safer on its own, especially if you remove from cigarette tobacco all toxic chemicals like polonium and others like MAOIs that supposedly boost the addictive potential and all you're left is pure nicotine. There is also snus or those small tobacco pouches you put under your lip but I recall hearing about them causing gum damage etc so even that may be more harmful than vaping. Tobacco (and snus) also have the littering problem. People throw away more or less non degradable garbage on the streets all day every day. I wonder how much big tobacco (excluding Altria now that they're in the vape game) lobbies against vaping because it eats into their profits? I wonder how much big pharma lobbies against vaping because it eats into their profits. It is not cool that likely the safest way to ingest nicotine is also likely the most expensive (gum, patches, etc). And these people have the audacity to fight vaping in order for it to be either _smoked_ tobacco or their extremely expensive pharma products. Surely vaping is the lesser evil compared to smoking and society should allow it OR remove tobacco overnight. Otherwise it seems weird and illogical. (I don't know if removing all external chemical catalysts from society is what should happen.)