Electronic cigarettes not a healthy alternative to real deal

Those of you smokers hoping to quit healthily using those newfangled electronic cigarettes coming out of China as a crutch... Sorry - turns out that they're just as bad as the real thing, just in a different way.

The US FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation, Division of Pharmaceutical Analysis (DPA) took an indepth look at the e-smoking devices on the market and found thus:

* Diethylene glycol was detected in one cartridge at approximately 1%. Diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze, is toxic to humans.
* Certain tobacco-specific nitrosamines which are human carcinogens were detected in half of the samples tested.
* Tobacco-specific impurities suspected of being harmful to humans-anabasine, myosmine, and β-nicotyrine-were detected in a majority of the samples tested.
* The electronic cigarette cartridges that were labeled as containing no nicotine had low levels of nicotine present in all cartridges tested, except one.
* Three different electronic cigarette cartridges with the same label were tested and each cartridge emitted a markedly different amount of nicotine with each puff. The nicotine levels per puff ranged from 26.8 to 43.2 mcg nicotine/100 mL puff.
* One high-nicotine cartridge delivered twice as much nicotine to users when the vapor from that electronic cigarette brand was inhaled than was delivered by a sample of the nicotine inhalation product (used as a control) approved by FDA for use as a smoking cessation aid.

The findings contradict claims by e-cig producers that their products are safe alternatives to the real deal. Most companies claim their e-cigarettes only contain water vapor, small amounts of nicotine and propylene glycol - a substance used to create fake smoke in theatrical productions.

Of course, like everything else in this country, part of the reason why these have turned out to be unhealthy is incredibly lax regulation. There's a high possibility that the first e-cigarette prototypes that came out could have helped with quitting that nasty smoking habit, but as they became popular and more companies got into the e-cigarette game, things like Diethylene glycol began appearing too.

We hope that one day we'll have a strong enough product safety body here to catch these kinds of things too.

Read more:
FDA Deems E-Cigs As Bad As The Real Thing
Analysis Finds Toxic Substances in Electronic Cigarettes