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a- e-cigarettes do smell. The fact that you have had few complaints may reflect the fact that people are courteous and do not like to get into arguments. I have

by hristov 14y ago

a- e-cigarettes do smell. The fact that you have had few complaints may reflect the fact that people are courteous and do not like to get into arguments. I have very much liked to complain several times about e-cigarettes myself. b- they almost certainly harm people around you although the harm may be less than that of secondary smoke. c - your last argument obviously does not apply to the present situation. If you ban e-cigarettes in places where cigarettes are already banned, then this ban would not cause an e-cigarette smoker to start smoking ordinary cigarettes. In fact, the contrary is true -- if smokers can smoke e-cigarettes in places in situations where they cannot smoke ordinary cigarettes, that very well may result in an increase of smoking. You can smoke your e-cigarettes in places and situations where cigarette smoking is allowed.

LnxPrgr3 14y ago
Do you have any evidence that e-cigarettes harm people around their users? The few studies I've seen seem very positive. Not that I mind if their use indoors is banned… but I find this claim interesting because it contradicts the (admittedly little) evidence I've seen.
- hristov 14y ago
  You can look at the wikipedia article for nicotine. Apparently it promotes cancer.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    When talking about the ability of substances to cause cancer it's always important to talk quantitatively, because there are a huge number of things that cause cancer and most have effects too subtle to worry about. In the case of nicotine it may cause cancer in humans at the levels smokers experience, but even so it's way less carcinogenic than alcohol, for example. Smoke of all sorts, on the other hand, is horribly carcinogenic and you can make a good argument for banning wood-burning stoves in cities.
  - LnxPrgr3 14y ago
    As they say, the dose makes the poison. So far, I don't see any evidence that exhaled e-cigarette vapor contains more than a trivial amount of nicotine. That nicotine could be a hazard for the user, but as far as I can tell you'd have a hell of a time getting a significant dose from passive vaping. If you're looking to avoid even trace amounts of nicotine, staying away from smokers isn't enough. You should probably avoid eating anything in the nightshade family (e.g. eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers). It's worth noting these foods contain other toxic alkaloids in low doses too—other parts of the plants with higher concentrations are inedible. The relevant question here is this: is exhaled vapor from nearby e-cigarette users a significant health risk? How does it compare to other environmental hazards?
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  Most of the existing evidence is produced by the e-cig industry. Hardly worth the paper it is written on. As another poster said, we know that nicotine is harmful within its own right, so if e-cigs are throwing it out into the air in unknown quantities that is worrying.
  - praxeologist 14y ago
    "Most of the existing evidence is produced by the e-cig industry. Hardly worth the paper it is written on." http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-study-of-electronic-cigarette-vapor.html http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-study-of-ele... >> Note also that this is an independent study which was not funded by any electronic cigarette company. The two funding sources were the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland and the National Institutes of Health. This adds objectivity and credibility to the work. The results of this study are close to the evidence from studies funded by ecig companies, making those all the more credible too.
    - hristov 14y ago
      Your study only shows that ecigs are safer than cigarettes. That is probably true and nobody here is disputing that. However, this is not sufficient reason to exempt ecigs from smoking bans. Smoking bans are about protecting the health of non-smokers. And non-smokers do not want the harmful effects of ecigs even if those effects are significantly less than those of cigarettes.
      - praxeologist 14y ago
        You have absolutely zero evidence that what ecigs put out is harmful to people nearby. If I am in the same room as someone with a severe nut allergy and I am sitting there cracking open peanuts like mad, I could hurt someone else. Should we ban peanuts? Ecigs aren't even as bad as peanuts because what is in them will never cause some sort of severe, instant reaction like to a person with nut allergies. We know what is in this stuff. We can go far on the side of erring on caution and extrapolate from how much nicotine is in the liquid and how much people run through in a day, how much nicotine is being put into the air. I have studied this subject extensively. I know the research on how much nicotine gets absorbed into the lungs versus now much escapes. I know how much air a person cycles through breathing in an hour. I know that others are not "being drugged" by nicotine. You are just a dishonest fearmonger. The few dangerous things that have been found in ecigs (stuff like acetaldehyde and formaldehyde) can be compared to the cancer risks from the other components of tobacco smoke as well as other carcinogens and chemicals which pose a cardiovascular risk. See J Fowles and E Dybing. Application of toxicological risk assessment principles to the chemical constituents of cigarette smoke. Tob. Control, Dec 2003; 12: 424 - 430. By far the worst cancer causer in tobacco smoke is 1,3-butadiene. This will be exhaled in smoke and also given off in "sidestream smoke" (the cigarette sits there burning). There is no smoke at all with ecigs and no sidestream vapor, because the vapor is triggered by the user and goes only into their lungs first. 1,3-butadiene is given off from things like having a campfire or BBQ-ing. Should we ban campfires and BBQs? What people are being exposed to is worse than ecigs.
praxeologist 14y ago
A - You sometimes get a whiff of the smell. 90%+ of the time a nonsmoker is going to like the smell because people vape things like cake and fruit flavors. Even smells people might find objectionable dissipate quickly. The stench doesn't hang on the users' clothing at all like regular cigarettes. I'm not sure what sort of situation you would have to be in to be bothered... B - Got some proof that secondhand vapor causes harm? Here is reference to a published indoor air quality study showing: "Comparisons of pollutant concentrations were made between e-cigarette vapor and tobacco smoke samples. Pollutants included VOCs, carbonyls, PAHs, nicotine, TSNAs, and glycols. From these results, risk analyses were conducted based on dilution into a 40 m3 room and standard toxicological data. Non-cancer risk analysis revealed “No Significant Risk” of harm to human health for vapor samples from e-liquids (A-D). In contrast, for tobacco smoke most findings markedly exceeded risk limits indicating a condition of “Significant Risk” of harm to human health. With regard to cancer risk analysis, no vapor sample from e-liquids A-D exceeded the risk limit for either children or adults. The tobacco smoke sample approached the risk limits for adult exposure." http://www.ivaqs.com/ http://www.ivaqs.com/ There's more and more very positive research all the time. Ecig users shouldn't have to prove that it is 100% safe. It is pretty clearly far safer than smoking and a great benefit to the health of people who are unable or unwilling to quit. C - "that very well may result in an increase of smoking." Pure speculation on your part. "
- hristov 14y ago
  You pointed towards a study commissioned by an e-cigarette users group in order to lobby their government. They use a completely arbitrary threshold of what is considered to not have considerable health risks. The study is only being published in an ecig industry journal. The smell is disgusting, regardless of what the flavor is. The flavor is only there to try to mask the underlying smell, which is gross. Your assumpions about nonsmokers liking the smell are pretty baseless. Everyone i have talked to about it has disliked it intensly. It is very nice that ecigs appear to be safer than cigarettes, but that does not mean i should be forced to breathe them. I already do not smoke.
  - praxeologist 14y ago
bromang 14y ago
from the wiki article on nicotine: "no epidemiological evidence supports that nicotine alone acts as a carcinogen in the formation of human cancer "
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I love how you cut off the sentence in order to mislead: > While no epidemiological evidence supports that nicotine alone acts as a carcinogen in the formation of human cancer, research over the last decade has identified nicotine's carcinogenic potential in animal models and cell culture. It then goes on to say: > Nicotine has been noted to directly cause cancer through a number of different mechanisms such as the activation of MAP Kinases.[76] Indirectly, nicotine increases cholinergic signalling (and adrenergic signalling in the case of colon cancer[77]), thereby impeding apoptosis (programmed cell death), promoting tumor growth, and activating growth factors and cellular mitogenic factors such as 5-LOX, and EGF. Nicotine also promotes cancer growth by stimulating angiogenesis and neovascularization.[78][79] In one study, nicotine administered to mice with tumors caused increases in tumor size (twofold increase), metastasis (nine-fold increase), and tumor recurrence (threefold increase).
  - cjh_ 14y ago
    I cannot upvote this enough, thank you for going to the effort of actually checking the source for the full claim.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    While it was dishonest to cut the sentence off in the middle, the lack of epidemiological evidence basically puts nicotine in the same camp as a ton of other substances that have "carcinogenic potential" but aren't considered a risk. Basically, it's plausible that nicotine is carcinogenic to some degree, but with the carcinogenicity of tobacco explained entirely by other factors, there's no real reason to believe that it's a significant risk, especially for bystanders.
GhotiFish 14y ago
a? Eh? New's to me. I will inform the person sitting next to me smoking an e-cig that it's smelly. That's unfair actually. I really rather like the myriad of scents he has. Mint, butterscotch, raspberry. I kinda wanted to try it, but I don't actually smoke anything. b? maybe? The smoke is the issue, really. c? maybe? At least the smoker I know deliberately pushes down the nicotine ratio he gets from his supplier. You can argue for erring on the side of safety, but the level of safety you are talking about is unreasonable. What we can say going in, what we know about how cigarettes cause cancer, suggest to us strongly that e-cigs are safer. It is reasonable to act that that assumption, even if there is a possibility that something horrible would be revealed about them later.
snarfy 14y ago
Your curry chicken lunch smells, your perfume smells, and your farts smell. It's not about being courteous. Complaining about it just makes you a douche bag. There is a point when a thing is allowed to smell.
hello_newman 14y ago
"b- they almost certainly harm people around you although the harm may be less than that of secondary smoke." E-cigs do not harm people in anyway, shape, or form. E-cigs are simply water, nicotine, and flavoring to make them taste a certain way (cherry, coffee, vanilla etc). I stupidly started smoking at 16 and now at 21, they really have helped me quit. I am all for smoking (electronic or otherwise) outside to respect other people's "airspace", but they are not harmful at all. End of story. The only harmful "second hand" aspect of them could be people inhaling small doses of nicotine vapor.
- CorrectingDude 14y ago
  E-cigs are NOT just water, nicotine, and flavoring. They contain propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, flavoring, and sometimes water. Your bottles of e-juice should say this on them, actually.
  - hello_newman 14y ago
    I smoke Blu's and here are the ingredients in the Vanilla flavor; Distilled Water, Nicotine, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Glycerin and Citric Acid. There is absolutely nothing, in this ingredient list, that is harmful to humans on the level that actual cigarettes (or rightly named, "cancer sticks") are. The glycerin the is only cause for concern, but glycerin is used in so many different products that it is healthy enough for human consumption. "E-cigs are NOT just water, nicotine, and flavoring" Ya, they basically are just that.
mullingitover 14y ago
>The fact that you have had few complaints may reflect the fact that people are courteous and do not like to get into arguments. Not 'few' complaints. NO complaints. In 2+ years of regular use. The two cases where I've been asked to stop using them were from people who felt it was their job to do so, not because of any complaint. >they almost certainly harm people around you although the harm may be less than that of secondary smoke. [citation needed, really. I'd love to see it.] >if smokers can smoke e-cigarettes in places in situations where they cannot smoke ordinary cigarettes, that very well may result in an increase of smoking. I think you're confused about what electronic cigarettes are. Electronic cigarettes do not produce smoke, so it's impossible for them to increase 'smoking.' They produce vapor. It's like saying that the steam rising from your coffee cup is 'smoke,' so all people with coffee should only be able to drink coffee in places where smoking is permitted.

by hristov 14y ago

LnxPrgr3 14y ago

Do you have any evidence that e-cigarettes harm people around their users? The few studies I've seen seem very positive. Not that I mind if their use indoors is banned… but I find this claim interesting because it contradicts the (admittedly little) evidence I've seen.

hristov 14y ago
You can look at the wikipedia article for nicotine. Apparently it promotes cancer.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  When talking about the ability of substances to cause cancer it's always important to talk quantitatively, because there are a huge number of things that cause cancer and most have effects too subtle to worry about. In the case of nicotine it may cause cancer in humans at the levels smokers experience, but even so it's way less carcinogenic than alcohol, for example. Smoke of all sorts, on the other hand, is horribly carcinogenic and you can make a good argument for banning wood-burning stoves in cities.
- LnxPrgr3 14y ago
  As they say, the dose makes the poison. So far, I don't see any evidence that exhaled e-cigarette vapor contains more than a trivial amount of nicotine. That nicotine could be a hazard for the user, but as far as I can tell you'd have a hell of a time getting a significant dose from passive vaping. If you're looking to avoid even trace amounts of nicotine, staying away from smokers isn't enough. You should probably avoid eating anything in the nightshade family (e.g. eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers). It's worth noting these foods contain other toxic alkaloids in low doses too—other parts of the plants with higher concentrations are inedible. The relevant question here is this: is exhaled vapor from nearby e-cigarette users a significant health risk? How does it compare to other environmental hazards?
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
Most of the existing evidence is produced by the e-cig industry. Hardly worth the paper it is written on. As another poster said, we know that nicotine is harmful within its own right, so if e-cigs are throwing it out into the air in unknown quantities that is worrying.
- praxeologist 14y ago
  "Most of the existing evidence is produced by the e-cig industry. Hardly worth the paper it is written on." http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-study-of-electronic-cigarette-vapor.html http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-study-of-ele... >> Note also that this is an independent study which was not funded by any electronic cigarette company. The two funding sources were the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland and the National Institutes of Health. This adds objectivity and credibility to the work. The results of this study are close to the evidence from studies funded by ecig companies, making those all the more credible too.
  - hristov 14y ago
    Your study only shows that ecigs are safer than cigarettes. That is probably true and nobody here is disputing that. However, this is not sufficient reason to exempt ecigs from smoking bans. Smoking bans are about protecting the health of non-smokers. And non-smokers do not want the harmful effects of ecigs even if those effects are significantly less than those of cigarettes.
    - praxeologist 14y ago
      You have absolutely zero evidence that what ecigs put out is harmful to people nearby. If I am in the same room as someone with a severe nut allergy and I am sitting there cracking open peanuts like mad, I could hurt someone else. Should we ban peanuts? Ecigs aren't even as bad as peanuts because what is in them will never cause some sort of severe, instant reaction like to a person with nut allergies. We know what is in this stuff. We can go far on the side of erring on caution and extrapolate from how much nicotine is in the liquid and how much people run through in a day, how much nicotine is being put into the air. I have studied this subject extensively. I know the research on how much nicotine gets absorbed into the lungs versus now much escapes. I know how much air a person cycles through breathing in an hour. I know that others are not "being drugged" by nicotine. You are just a dishonest fearmonger. The few dangerous things that have been found in ecigs (stuff like acetaldehyde and formaldehyde) can be compared to the cancer risks from the other components of tobacco smoke as well as other carcinogens and chemicals which pose a cardiovascular risk. See J Fowles and E Dybing. Application of toxicological risk assessment principles to the chemical constituents of cigarette smoke. Tob. Control, Dec 2003; 12: 424 - 430. By far the worst cancer causer in tobacco smoke is 1,3-butadiene. This will be exhaled in smoke and also given off in "sidestream smoke" (the cigarette sits there burning). There is no smoke at all with ecigs and no sidestream vapor, because the vapor is triggered by the user and goes only into their lungs first. 1,3-butadiene is given off from things like having a campfire or BBQ-ing. Should we ban campfires and BBQs? What people are being exposed to is worse than ecigs.

praxeologist 14y ago

A - You sometimes get a whiff of the smell. 90%+ of the time a nonsmoker is going to like the smell because people vape things like cake and fruit flavors. Even smells people might find objectionable dissipate quickly. The stench doesn't hang on the users' clothing at all like regular cigarettes. I'm not sure what sort of situation you would have to be in to be bothered... B - Got some proof that secondhand vapor causes harm? Here is reference to a published indoor air quality study showing: "Comparisons of pollutant concentrations were made between e-cigarette vapor and tobacco smoke samples. Pollutants included VOCs, carbonyls, PAHs, nicotine, TSNAs, and glycols. From these results, risk analyses were conducted based on dilution into a 40 m3 room and standard toxicological data. Non-cancer risk analysis revealed “No Significant Risk” of harm to human health for vapor samples from e-liquids (A-D). In contrast, for tobacco smoke most findings markedly exceeded risk limits indicating a condition of “Significant Risk” of harm to human health. With regard to cancer risk analysis, no vapor sample from e-liquids A-D exceeded the risk limit for either children or adults. The tobacco smoke sample approached the risk limits for adult exposure." http://www.ivaqs.com/ http://www.ivaqs.com/ There's more and more very positive research all the time. Ecig users shouldn't have to prove that it is 100% safe. It is pretty clearly far safer than smoking and a great benefit to the health of people who are unable or unwilling to quit. C - "that very well may result in an increase of smoking." Pure speculation on your part. "

hristov 14y ago
You pointed towards a study commissioned by an e-cigarette users group in order to lobby their government. They use a completely arbitrary threshold of what is considered to not have considerable health risks. The study is only being published in an ecig industry journal. The smell is disgusting, regardless of what the flavor is. The flavor is only there to try to mask the underlying smell, which is gross. Your assumpions about nonsmokers liking the smell are pretty baseless. Everyone i have talked to about it has disliked it intensly. It is very nice that ecigs appear to be safer than cigarettes, but that does not mean i should be forced to breathe them. I already do not smoke.
- praxeologist 14y ago

bromang 14y ago

from the wiki article on nicotine: "no epidemiological evidence supports that nicotine alone acts as a carcinogen in the formation of human cancer "

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I love how you cut off the sentence in order to mislead: > While no epidemiological evidence supports that nicotine alone acts as a carcinogen in the formation of human cancer, research over the last decade has identified nicotine's carcinogenic potential in animal models and cell culture. It then goes on to say: > Nicotine has been noted to directly cause cancer through a number of different mechanisms such as the activation of MAP Kinases.[76] Indirectly, nicotine increases cholinergic signalling (and adrenergic signalling in the case of colon cancer[77]), thereby impeding apoptosis (programmed cell death), promoting tumor growth, and activating growth factors and cellular mitogenic factors such as 5-LOX, and EGF. Nicotine also promotes cancer growth by stimulating angiogenesis and neovascularization.[78][79] In one study, nicotine administered to mice with tumors caused increases in tumor size (twofold increase), metastasis (nine-fold increase), and tumor recurrence (threefold increase).
- cjh_ 14y ago
  I cannot upvote this enough, thank you for going to the effort of actually checking the source for the full claim.
- mistercow 14y ago
  While it was dishonest to cut the sentence off in the middle, the lack of epidemiological evidence basically puts nicotine in the same camp as a ton of other substances that have "carcinogenic potential" but aren't considered a risk. Basically, it's plausible that nicotine is carcinogenic to some degree, but with the carcinogenicity of tobacco explained entirely by other factors, there's no real reason to believe that it's a significant risk, especially for bystanders.

GhotiFish 14y ago

a? Eh? New's to me. I will inform the person sitting next to me smoking an e-cig that it's smelly. That's unfair actually. I really rather like the myriad of scents he has. Mint, butterscotch, raspberry. I kinda wanted to try it, but I don't actually smoke anything. b? maybe? The smoke is the issue, really. c? maybe? At least the smoker I know deliberately pushes down the nicotine ratio he gets from his supplier. You can argue for erring on the side of safety, but the level of safety you are talking about is unreasonable. What we can say going in, what we know about how cigarettes cause cancer, suggest to us strongly that e-cigs are safer. It is reasonable to act that that assumption, even if there is a possibility that something horrible would be revealed about them later.

snarfy 14y ago

Your curry chicken lunch smells, your perfume smells, and your farts smell. It's not about being courteous. Complaining about it just makes you a douche bag. There is a point when a thing is allowed to smell.

hello_newman 14y ago

"b- they almost certainly harm people around you although the harm may be less than that of secondary smoke." E-cigs do not harm people in anyway, shape, or form. E-cigs are simply water, nicotine, and flavoring to make them taste a certain way (cherry, coffee, vanilla etc). I stupidly started smoking at 16 and now at 21, they really have helped me quit. I am all for smoking (electronic or otherwise) outside to respect other people's "airspace", but they are not harmful at all. End of story. The only harmful "second hand" aspect of them could be people inhaling small doses of nicotine vapor.

CorrectingDude 14y ago
E-cigs are NOT just water, nicotine, and flavoring. They contain propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, flavoring, and sometimes water. Your bottles of e-juice should say this on them, actually.
- hello_newman 14y ago
  I smoke Blu's and here are the ingredients in the Vanilla flavor; Distilled Water, Nicotine, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Glycerin and Citric Acid. There is absolutely nothing, in this ingredient list, that is harmful to humans on the level that actual cigarettes (or rightly named, "cancer sticks") are. The glycerin the is only cause for concern, but glycerin is used in so many different products that it is healthy enough for human consumption. "E-cigs are NOT just water, nicotine, and flavoring" Ya, they basically are just that.

mullingitover 14y ago

>The fact that you have had few complaints may reflect the fact that people are courteous and do not like to get into arguments. Not 'few' complaints. NO complaints. In 2+ years of regular use. The two cases where I've been asked to stop using them were from people who felt it was their job to do so, not because of any complaint. >they almost certainly harm people around you although the harm may be less than that of secondary smoke. [citation needed, really. I'd love to see it.] >if smokers can smoke e-cigarettes in places in situations where they cannot smoke ordinary cigarettes, that very well may result in an increase of smoking. I think you're confused about what electronic cigarettes are. Electronic cigarettes do not produce smoke, so it's impossible for them to increase 'smoking.' They produce vapor. It's like saying that the steam rising from your coffee cup is 'smoke,' so all people with coffee should only be able to drink coffee in places where smoking is permitted.