Vaping Still Pollutes

The claim that vaping mist contains only harmless water is not true, research suggests. Bystanders unknowingly inhale toxins, just as they do from cigarettes.

Instead of inhaling smoke, users of electronic cigarettes (called e-cigarettes or e-cigs, for short, or vaping), breathe in vapor, so vaping does not put smoke in the air. But e-cigarette mist pollutes in a different way.

The common claim that vaping mist contains only harmless water is simply not true, research suggests. More than 70 percent of the inhaled substances in e-cigs, some of them toxic, are eventually exhaled, according to a 2020 overview from a team at the University of California, Los Angeles, and may be inhaled by bystanders.

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Here's how the U.S. Surgeon General puts it: the mist from e-cigarettes contains “harmful and potentially harmful chemicals, including nicotine; ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs; flavoring, such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to a serious lung disease; volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, which is found in car exhaust; and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.”

The debate centers on how much exposure is safe. As the Surgeon General goes on to say, “Scientists are still working to understand more fully the health effects and harmful doses of e-cigarette contents when they are heated and turned into an aerosol, both for active users who inhale from a device and for those who are exposed to the aerosol secondhand.”

How e-cigs work

The devices heat a liquid mixture composed of nicotine, flavoring, and other chemicals, producing a mist users inhale. When they exhale, fine and ultra-fine particles enter the air and can end up in the lungs and blood of bystanders.

Several studies have reported overall high concentrations of particles in the air when e-cigs are used indoors, more than three times what might occur indoors if no one was vaping or smoking.

Those particles are not harmless, as 11 studies the Los Angeles team reviewed reported. Bystanders are exposed to carcinogenic hydrocarbons and vaporized propylene glycol, an additive typically used in tobacco that is known to irritate airways. Vaping mist could possibly go deep into the lungs.

E-cig mist also releases a host of harmful metals into the air at significantly higher levels than regular cigarettes. E-cig vapor produces the toxic element chromium, which is absent from traditional cigarettes, as well as four times more nickel than standard cigarettes. Other toxic metals, including lead and zinc, were found in second-hand e-cigarette vapor, too, but in concentrations lower than traditional cigarettes.

On the other hand, e-cig mist does not expose bystanders to carbon monoxide, as cigarette smoke does. Depending on the type of vape, the nicotine levels in e-cig mist may be a 10th of what occurs in cigarette smoke.

In a 2015 study that appeared in the respected New England Journal of Medicine, Portland State University researchers warned that high temperatures can produce vapor with a hefty dose of  formaldehye.

“The popular ‘tank system’ e-cigarettes allow users to really turn up the heat and deliver high amounts of vapor, or e-cigarette smoke,” said lead researcher David H. Peyton, PhD. "Our research shows that when heated at higher temperatures, e-cigarette juices can vaporize and form large amounts of ‘hidden formaldehyde,’ five to 15 times higher than the amount of formaldehyde in traditional cigarettes.”

Debate and safety

Researchers continue to investigate and debate the safety of e-cigs, and how to make them safer. Because e-cigs are newer than cigarettes, there is much less data about their effects over time both on users and bystanders. But some states have taken action. As of the end of 2021, 17 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have outlawed e-cigs in indoor worksites, restaurants, and bars.

The Food and Drug Administration has outlawed selling e-cigs to anyone under 21. Yet, in 2021, the agency approved marketing of three vaping products, arguing that they were less toxic than cigarettes and might help adult smokers who switch.

For now, a commonsense approach seems reasonable. Consider keeping children and pregnant women away from people who vape and avoid confined areas where many people are using e-cigs, filling the air with their mist.

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