Toxic Metals In Vapour Review
Roberto Sussman and Sebastien Soulet have published an in-depth review of 12 laboratory studies looking at the metal content in vaping emissions
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by Dave Cross
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Writing in the forward of the special edition, editors Professor Andrzej Sobczak and Dr Leon Kośmider say: “Electronic cigarettes (ECs) have been present on the consumer market for over a decade, and the number of scientific publications in the PubMed database has now exceeded seven thousand.
“Despite the number of publications, there is still no consensus in the scientific community about their safety. However, it should be emphasised that a comparison of the equivalent quantities of tobacco smoke and the aerosol produced from e-cigarettes shows a significantly lower quantity of toxic compounds in the aerosol compared with tobacco smoke. This can be seen as a way of reducing the health damage to cigarette smokers who cannot or are unwilling to quit using conventional methods.”
They add that randomised control studies have shown that vaping is useful for smoking cessation. The Special Issue covered:
- The chemical composition of e-liquids and vapour
- Studies looking at the health impact of e-cigarettes, snus, and heat but not burn tobacco products
- Population studies on vaping
- Youth take-up intervention studies, and
- Smoking cessation studies among adult smokers
Dr Soulet and Dr Sussman’s contribution was a paper that analysed 12 laboratory studies on metal content in vaping emissions.
Sebastien Soulet works at Ingesciences in France and Roberto Sussman at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico.
They write: “The inhalation of metallic compounds in e-cigarette aerosol emissions presents legitimate concerns of potential harms for users. We provide a critical review of laboratory studies published after 2017 on metal contents in EC aerosol, focusing on the consistency between their experimental design, real life device usage and appropriate evaluation of exposure risks.
“All experiments reporting levels above toxicological markers for some metals (e.g., nickel, lead, copper, manganese) exhibited the following experimental flaws:
- high powered sub-ohm tank devices tested by means of puffing protocols whose airflows and puff volumes are conceived and appropriate for low powered devices; this testing necessarily involves overheating conditions that favour the production of toxicants and generate aerosols that are likely repellent to human users
- miscalculation of exposure levels from experimental outcomes
- pods and tank devices acquired months and years before the experiments, so that corrosion effects cannot be ruled out
- failure to disclose important information on the characteristics of pods and tank devices, on the experimental methodology and on the resulting outcomes, thus hindering the interpretation of results and the possibility of replication
“In general, low powered devices tested without these shortcomings produced metal exposure levels well below strict reference toxicological markers.
“We believe this review provides useful guidelines for a more objective risk assessment of EC aerosol emissions and signals the necessity to upgrade current laboratory testing standards.”
References:
- Special Issue "Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Cigarettes" - https://www.mdpi.com/journal/toxics/special_issues/e-cigarettes_harm
- A Critical Review of Recent Literature on Metal Contents in E-Cigarette Aerosol - https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/10/9/510/pdf
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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