Dirty Drip Tip Danger
Dr Suzi Gage has warned vapers to make sure that their drip tips are clean as they could be inhaling harmful bacteria
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by Dave Cross
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Dr Gage is a winner of the Ockham Award for Best Podcast. She has gone on to put the contents of those discussion into print with “Say Why To Drugs: Everything You Need to Know About the Drugs We Take and Why We Get High”.
She believes that the moisture created when vapers inhale might contain bacteria if drip tips aren’t clean. This microorganism, she says, could lead to people using ecigs becoming ill.
Dr Gage said: “We know what it is about tobacco cigarettes that is so risky to health, it’s the tar, the carbon monoxide, the formaldehyde, the heavy metals and the tens or even hundreds of carcinogens within the tobacco. If you’re an e-cigarette user, have a little think about how often you clean the mouthpiece that you’re putting in your mouth and inhaling your vapour through.
“These things either are not present in e-cigarettes, they don’t contain tobacco itself, or they might be present but orders of magnitude lower than in cigarettes. Now this doesn’t mean that e-cigarettes are harmless because there might be other aspects of inhaling heated vapour that are risky that we don’t know about yet.
“For example, perhaps the moisture associated with vapour could harbour bacteria, particularly as these devices are re-used rather than single use in the way that cigarettes are. If you’re an e-cigarette user, have a little think about how often you clean the mouthpiece that you’re putting in your mouth and inhaling your vapour through.”
West Midland’s Express and Star expressed concern over stories from the USA about lung injuries. Suzi explained that it was to do with Vitamin E Acetate and not eliquids: “This is something that’s known to be toxic or very, very harmful if inhaled. Individuals have been using unregulated e-cigarette liquids often containing cannabis or more, usually THC extracted from cannabis, often obtained on the black market and absolutely not a regulated product.
“The outbreak of illnesses and deaths was of course extremely worrying but it led to some countries calling for e-cigarettes to be banned. Now, in my opinion, this is akin to someone going blind after drinking bathtub moonshine and suggesting this means we should ban gin and tonics.”
Dr Gage’s book is published by Hodder & Stoughton and available from all good book retailers.
Related:
- Say Why To Drugs, the podcast – [link]
- Say Why To Drugs, Hodder & Stoughton – [link]
- Vapers warned of health risks from dirty mouthpieces, Express and Star – [link]Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
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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