E-Cigarettes - Selling a Poison by the Barrel

Did you make the switch to Electronic Cigarettes – thinking it was a safer option?  You may want to rethink this decision!

A dangerous new form of a powerful stimulant is hitting markets nationwide, for sale by the vial, the gallon and even the barrel.  The drug is nicotine, in its potent, liquid form — extracted from tobacco and tinctured with a cocktail of flavorings, colorings and assorted chemicals to feed the fast-growing electronic cigarette industry.

These “e-liquids,” the key ingredients in e-cigarettes, are powerful neurotoxins. Tiny amounts, whether ingested or absorbed through the skin, can cause vomiting and seizures and even be lethal. In fact, just a teaspoon of even highly diluted e-liquid can kill a small child.

But, like e-cigarettes, e-liquids are not regulated by federal authorities. They are mixed on factory floors and in the back rooms of shops, and sold legally in stores and online in small bottles that are kept casually around the house for regular refilling of e-cigarettes.

Evidence of the potential dangers is already emerging. Toxicologists warn that e-liquids pose a significant risk to public health, particularly to children, who may be drawn to their bright colors and fragrant flavorings like cherry, chocolate and bubble gum.

“It’s not a matter of if a child will be seriously poisoned or killed,” said Lee Cantrell, director of the San Diego division of the California Poison Control System and a professor of pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s a matter of when.”

Reports of accidental poisonings, notably among children, are soaring. Since 2011, there appears to have been one death in the United States, a suicide by an adult who injected nicotine. But less serious cases have led to a surge in calls to poison control centers. Nationwide, the number of cases linked to e-liquids jumped to 1,351 in 2013, a 300 percent increase from 2012, and the number is on pace to double this year, according to information from the National Poison Data System. Of the cases in 2013, 365 were referred to hospitals, triple the previous year’s number.

In terms of the immediate poison risk, e-liquids are far more dangerous than tobacco, because the liquid is absorbed more quickly, even in diluted concentrations.  “This is one of the most potent naturally occurring toxins we have,” Mr. Cantrell said of nicotine. But e-liquids are now available almost everywhere. “It is sold all over the place. It is ubiquitous in society.”

The surge in poisonings reflects not only the growth of e-cigarettes but also a shift in technology. Initially, many e-cigarettes were disposable devices that looked like conventional cigarettes. Increasingly, however, they are larger, reusable gadgets that can be refilled with liquid, generally a combination of nicotine, flavorings and solvents. In Kentucky, where about 40 percent of cases involved adults, one woman was admitted to the hospital with cardiac problems after her e-cigarette broke in her bed, spilling the e-liquid, which was then absorbed through her skin.

The increased use of liquid nicotine has, in effect, created a new kind of recreational drug category, and a controversial one. For advocates of e-cigarettes, liquid nicotine represents the fuel of a technology that might prompt people to quit smoking, and there is anecdotal evidence that is happening. But there are no long-term studies about whether e-cigarettes will be better than nicotine gum or patches at helping people quit. Nor are there studies about the long-term effects of inhaling vaporized nicotine.

Unlike nicotine gums and patches, e-cigarettes and their ingredients are not regulated. The Food and Drug Administration has said it plans to regulate e-cigarettes but has not disclosed how it will approach the issue. Many e-cigarette companies hope there will be limited regulation.

Mr. Paul estimated that this year in the United States there will be sales of one million to two million liters of liquid used to refill e-cigarettes, and it is widely available on the Internet. Liquid Nicotine Wholesalers, based in Peoria, Ariz., charges $110 for a liter with 10 percent nicotine concentration. The company says on its website that it also offers a 55 gallon size. Vaporworld.biz sells a gallon at 10 percent concentrations for $195.

Mr. Paul said he was worried that some manufacturers outside the United States — China is a major center of e-cigarette production — were not always delivering the concentrations and purity of nicotine they promise. Some retailers, Mr. Paul said, “are selling liquid and they don’t have a clue what is in it.”

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Electronic Cigarettes Cause Lung Damage

Here at Positive Change Hypnosis, we often talk about the long-term effects of health and wellness products. And here is yet another example of how important it is not to simply assume something is safe, just because we have not heard otherwise.

Electronic cigarettes cause damage to the lungs, according to a study that challenges earlier research suggesting the devices to quit smoking are harmless.

E-cigarettes, electronic tubes that simulate the effect of smoking by producing nicotine vapor, caused an immediate increase in airway resistance, lasting for 10 minutes, making it harder for participants to breathe, researchers from the University of Athens said in a study presented at the European Respiratory Society annual meeting in Vienna today.

The researchers used a lung function test to observe airway resistance in 32 participants who used an e-cigarette for 10 minutes. Among the healthy subjects who had never smoked, airway resistance rose to an average 206 percent from 182 percent; among smokers with normal lung function, the reading rose to an average 220 percent from 176 percent.

“We do not yet know whether unapproved nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigarettes, are safer than normal cigarettes, despite marketing claims that they are less harmful,” Christina Gratziou, one of the study authors, said in a statement. “This research helps us to understand how these products could be potentially harmful.”

More research is needed to understand whether the effect on the lungs is long-lasting, Gratziou said.

Gratziou’s study supports the European Respiratory Society’s position on e-cigarettes and other emerging nicotine delivery products, Klaus Rabe, the group’s president, told reporters today in Vienna.

“ERS does not classify e-cigarettes as a safe alternative to smoking nor does it consider them an approved tobacco cessation tool,” Rabe reiterated from the society’s statement in February. “ERS recommends following effective smoking cessation treatment guidelines based on clinical evidence which do not advocate the use of such products.”

The study follows a separate paper presented last month by researchers at the Athens-based Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting that said e-cigarettes prompted no adverse effects on cardiac function.

Previous studies have found that the electronic devices would have to be smoked daily for four to 12 months to achieve the levels of carcinogenic nitrosamines that are present in a single tobacco cigarette, said the researchers for that paper. Industry-wide e-cigarette sales this year are likely to double from $250 million in 2011, according to UBS AG.

Electronic cigarettes, which mimic the look and feel of traditional versions without generating smoke and ash, are one of the few smoking alternatives that provide users with their chemical need for nicotine and reproduce the psychological effect of holding and smoking a cigarette, the Onassis researchers said.

Makers of the battery-powered devices include Lorillard Inc. (LO), a Greensboro, North Carolina-based producer of standard cigarettes, which acquired Blu Ecigs for $135 million in April. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to impose rules on the testing and production of e-cigarettes.

About 2.5 million people use e-cigarettes in the U.S., according to an estimate by the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association.

© Copyright 2012 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.

The moral of the story - be careful when trying new health and wellness products because they just haven’t been around long enough to make a conclusive determination of whether or not they are “truly” safe for us.

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