More About Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is back on the vaping table, but this time it’s better news.
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by Dave Cross
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The CDC recently stated that some people would be three times more at risk of getting cancer than others. Were they smokers or vapers, you ask? No, these people had the temerity to use laminate flooring. Of course, being the CDC, not all is as it first appears in the media coverage but what was clear was that they were talking about our friend formaldehyde.
The increased risk was based on an estimate (figures that aren’t real) of a potential problem (that probably isn’t). Regardless, the media likes a good scare story so they ran with it anyway. And here is our problem: the wonderful people at ACSH point out that we are surrounded by formaldehyde. It is in our fruit juice, our bodies manufacture it so that our cells can function and it’s outside too in car exhaust and the volatile chemicals given off by trees.
Regarding to possibility that its dangers are being over-stated, they write: “The half-life (the amount of time it takes for half of something to ‘go away’) of formaldehyde is about one minute. This means that after five minutes, 97 percent of the formaldehyde is gone, and 99.9 percent after 10 minutes.”
And so, on to the paper titled “Effect of variable power levels on the yield of total aerosol mass and formation of aldehydes in e-cigarette aerosols”, published in this month’s Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology journal.
Although there is some fluctuation in the results (possibly explained by a denser eliquid leading to dry wicks), the conclusions from the research team were that measured levels from electronic cigarettes tested were less than both those found in cigarette smoke and below the OSHA 8-hour workplace exposure limit. Also, and very interestingly, “an increase in the efficiency of aerosol production with increasing power supplied to the atomizer was correlated with lower levels of aldehydes in the [ecig’s] aerosol.”
The team noted that a major problem with research is that tests on one type of e-Cig are then applied to all vaping products. They highlight that differences between products mean that some are far more efficient than others: “Our results demonstrate that large differences exist in the EC devices available in the market place, and that, depending on the device, changes in power applied to the atomizer can have dramatic, but different, impacts on both total aerosol yield and the formation of aldehyde compounds in the EC aerosol, with some devices far more capable than others of maximizing liquid aerosolization while minimizing thermal decomposition at higher power levels.”
It is worth noting that Innokin and Evolv supplied the better performing products – contrasting with the previous focus of researchers to use CE4s and the like.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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