VAPING VS SMOKING

Smoking is a practice in which a substance, most commonly tobacco, is burned and the smoke is tasted or inhaled. Vaping refers to the use of e-cigarettes that simulate the experience of smoking, and is usually meant for adult smokers who want to move away from the habit of traditional smoking. The term ‘vaping’ arises from inhaling and exhaling the vapor created from a combination of nicotine, a liquid and specific flavors, making it close to smoking without its risk to the lungs.

Any debate held to discuss the health risks of vaping shouldn’t proceed before a comparison is made to smoking. Why? One might ask. Because one, vapes are made to be less harmful substitutes for cigarettes. Two, comparing vapers and smokers has meaning, as most vapers smoke currently or are ex-smokers.

However, most scientific studies evade comparing vaping and smoking. So, something’s missing. People grok that smoking indeed has a plethora of health risks for you, but what about vaping? Does vaping impact on your health? While we’ve probably learnt about the safety of vaping, we should equally compare its safety to that of smoking. Is it safer?

England’s Public Health body has come out clear that vaping is 95% more harmless than smoking. The body knows that since vaping is just another option for smoking, concentrating on the dangers of vaping minus smoking isn’t complete. Due to limited studies that make a direct comparison between the two, the only available information on them must then be used appropriately.

Vaping and Your Lungs – Does It Cause Harm

Well known is the harm by cigarettes to lungs. Esophageal, as well as lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, COPD, emphysema,  are just some of the diseases arising from prolonged inhalation of tobacco. What about vaping?

Smoke from cigars contains myriad types of chemicals. Carcinogens are among them, and they exceed 70. Tiny particles of paper and tobacco that’s burnt are also in the mix. They’re deposited in the lungs, deep inside. On the other hand, vaping has no known carcinogens in large quantities to be declared risky. Furthermore, it has no particles like smoke.

Dangerous components of burning tobacco are mostly missing in vapes. During vaping, no combustion occurs. Consequently, neither tar nor carbon monoxide is produced (another pair of harmful components of smoking). With vaping, heat from a coil is used to turn e-liquid to aerosol, which is capable of being inhaled. The aerosol resembles smoke. This, however, doesn’t mean that vaping can’t be harmful to the lungs.

Propylene glycol, flavours, and vegetable glycerin are ingredients of e-liquid that are feared to have risks. Not a single research has brought out clear harms of long-term inhalation of PG or VG by humans. Research about its inhalation by animals hasn’t realized any harms either. PG has been proved to irritate the airways, though that shouldn’t worry human life.

What Are Some Dangers of Flavors to Your Lungs

The dangers of flavourings of e-liquid haven’t yet been studied well. These flavourings are home to several chemicals, some of which seem to contain more danger to the lungs. The flavours have recently been used only on eaten food, not inhalants. Toxicology studies, as a result, have concentrated on proving their (flavours) safety for consumption alone.

Diacetyl, a known Diketone, has hit the headlines of late, having been found in e-liquids. The group of chemicals of flavours, when inhaled much, is known for causing a fatal disease dubbed “Popcorn Lung”. Commonly, it attacks workers at popcorn-making firms. Some good news is that Diketones aren’t in all e-liquids. In 2014, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos summarized his study that acetyl and diacetyl are “escapable risks”. To that effect, some manufacturers excluded them while others started indicating their content levels in products.

Diketones are found 100-750 more times in cigars than e-liquids. However, cigarettes aren’t linked to the Popcorn Lung disease. So, with the smaller amounts in e-liquids, it is less likely to be harmful than in cigarettes. But, get this right: that diketones aren’t safe for inhalation, but if a safer inhalation has to be chosen, vaping makes the better choice.

Is Vaping Harmful to Your Oral Health

Smoking is a major player concerning the development of oral diseases like mouth cancer and more. Cigars can also lead to dental, periodontal and a lot more diseases. Gingival disorders are likes. The smoke in cigar can also make the existing condition of periodontal disorder worse by altering the bacteria (microbiome) inside your mouth.

Not much information is available regarding the health effects of vaping on one’s oral health. Recently, a literature review briefed this state, claiming a scarcity of evidence. It noted a “paucity of evidence” in its summary. This was from the Journal of Pathology and Medicine. Nevertheless, the researchers had a few interesting inferences.

They elaborate on a study which has it that there is a higher prevalence of a disease known as Nicotine Stomatitis in vapers. The condition doesn’t, however, originate from nicotine. It is brought about by heat, which causes lesions in your mouth. Luckily, upon doing away with the source of heat, the condition disappears.

Another small study concentrated on 10 individuals of each group of vapers, smokers and neutral participants (neither of the two). It uncovered that the oral bacterial profile of vapers differed from the profiles of the other two, which were the same. It then summarized that vapour does not affect the microbiome. And, the study was on a small scale, so we can’t rely on its conclusions. The review also includes other small-scale researches, questioning their applicability due to their size and absence of reliable controls.

Lastly, here’s the issue of damage to vapers’ mouths due to the explosion of vapes. The cases are quite just a few, but he should be attributed more to the safety of its battery than any other thing. By use of more sophisticated batteries, these cases can be reduced to none.

Vaping and Cancer

When cells’ DNA is damaged and mutated, they grow without limit, and this is termed as cancer. And, the tumor can remain in one or spread to other organs. People often recognize cigarettes are causers of lung cancer. Cancer kills Americans than any other and most of them are smokers.

There are a lot more types of cancer that can arise from smoking since: not only areas that be in contact with smoke gets cancer, but also organs and bloodstreams that contact smoke’s byproducts. CDC claims that smoking can lead to cancer in any part of the body.

Vapes contain carcinogen, but in lower levels that alleviates the risk of contracting cancer. A journal titled Tobacco Control (2017) records that the risk of cancer while using some pharmaceutical products, e.g. patches of nicotine is the same as that of using vapes. This is less than 1% of the risk of smoking. Only carbonyls, which come out as a result of excess heating of the Vale posed quite a substantial risk of cancer.

There are researches with similar inferences. One in 2016 had its findings published in a journal dubbed Mutation Research, after testing the ability of both smoke and e-cig vapour to lead to cell mutation in bacteria. It found out that smoke was both toxic and caused mutations while vape did neither of the two.

Even nicotine – regardless of where it is contained – has never been proven to lead to cancer. A report from the Royal College of Physicians in 2016, after a 5-year study of lung health, proved this. It reports about the relationship between nicotine and cancer, saying that no relationship exists between prolonged use of NRT and any type of cancer.

Is Formaldehyde Contained in Vapes

The EPA defines formaldehyde as a gas that’s both colourless and flammable with a strong odour at room temperature. Exposure to it is harmful.

In 2016, Portland State University stated that vapes emitted much formaldehyde, to levels exceeding cigarettes. They, however, omitted the fact that their experiments were based on huge voltages and that they used smoking machines for producing vapour. One couldn’t bear taking in (inhaling) this type.

This can be similarly done at home by you. Simply place a slice of bread or two inside a toaster then leave it alone until when the toaster starts producing smoke and the bread is now black. The black colour is because it contains carbon. Then you might ask yourself whether the result has carcinogen. Indeed it does, but the associated danger isn’t significant as no one eats them. The same way, toxic aldehydes can’t he inhaled recurrently; thus, their danger isn’t of threat.

Konstantinos, in 2017, did a copy of the experiment by Portland University above and indeed proved that such vapour produced under the conditions by the university were such distasteful that people could avoid them.

Gene Gillman and Konstanitos (2018) also reviewed the 32 studies that attempted to prove the existence of formaldehyde, acrolein, as well as acetaldehyde in vapour. They discovered that these findings were based on the poor methodology that lead to dry puff conditions. As a result, all the 32 researchers could find formaldehyde and the rest of carbonyls. The two researchers then proposed conditions like using modern atomizers and more for more reliable findings.

These authors also demystified that we normally inhale 1mg (of formaldehyde) each day. A vaper that uses the only 5mg of e-liquid every day increases this by an insignificant amount of 0.083mg (less than 9%).

Bottom Line

Cigarettes pose mayhem to the whole body, practically from top to bottom, side to side. There are more than enough proofs for this. To the contrary, no evidence is there to prove similar effects in the case of vaping. Perhaps nicotine… But no! Nicotine hasn’t any effects on the dangers of smoking. So vaping is significantly better than smoking.