Crater of a volcano: an electronic cigarette is more dangerous for you than you imagine

Innocent in appearance, radiates calmness and cleanliness - and is many times more frightening.

The ignition of the electronic cigarette in the mouth of a young man from Dimona was widely covered in the media, but the danger of smoking lurks in many other directions

David Rosenthal

26/10/2022

Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 12:30 p.m

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What do electronic cigarettes do to your body?

(AP, Reuters, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

Recently, a young man injured his face as a result of an electronic cigarette exploding.

The media coverage surrounding the case diverted public attention from the more significant risks of smoking electronic cigarettes.

The manufacturers invest hundreds of millions of dollars in order to make the products look attractive and innocent, but when you open the cigarette and examine the composition of the ingredients, you discover that it includes compounds that have the potential to have an extremely harmful health effect, and not only on the smoker himself.

We dived into the updated research on the subject, we talked to a series of expert doctors, all in order to understand how great the risk is.

They smoke a substance intended for melting resins and removing varnish

Most smokers really have no idea about the composition of the compound found in the vapor liquid in the electronic cigarette.

The majority are aware of the fact that it contains nicotine, flavoring agents, but when it comes to its toxic ingredients - knowledge tends to zero.

So what is really there?

Let's start with the substance acetaldehyde - a toxic substance that in high concentrations dramatically increases the risk of cancer.

We will continue with toluene - a substance used to dissolve artificial resins, paints, ink, varnish, rubber and more.

Toluene is also used as a starting material for the explosive, TNT and plastic materials such as polyurethane.

In addition, an electronic cigarette contains a series of substances, more familiar, and no less harmful.

A study published about a year ago at Johns Hopkins University found high and toxic levels of 15 heavy metals, including nickel, chromium and lead, in the liquid that surrounds the heating coil in the electronic cigarette and in the spray emitted from it.

The findings were collected from cigarettes of different manufacturers, received from 56 users.

Has your son started fussing?

There is a high chance that it is because of the electronic cigarette

The FDA published a study according to which a link was identified between the risk of seizures and the use of electronic cigarettes, mainly among teenagers and young adults.

In fact, every week new scientific evidence and updated reports are accumulating linking electronic cigarettes with real health risks.

The FDA notice shows that electronic cigarettes are now suspected of causing convulsions among teenagers based on reports from the field.

A link was found between the risk of convulsions and the use of electronic cigarettes.

A young woman smoking (Photo: ShutterStock)

In addition, in a study conducted in the United States based on the findings of an extensive national survey initiated by the American Center for Disease Control (CDC), it was found that electronic cigarettes may increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The study, which was carried out as part of the School of Medicine at the University of Kansas, included 410,651 American subjects. Adults (over the age of 18). According to his results, an electronic cigarette smoker has a 40 percent higher risk of developing angina pectoris ("angina pectoris") or coronary heart disease - a disease that damages the arteries that supply blood to the heart, compared to subjects who have not experimented with electronic cigarettes.

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Opinions differ regarding the potential of quitting smoking regular cigarettes

This is an issue to which the answer is still not clear-cut.

On the one hand, the British health organizations are on the side of electronic cigarettes as a means of withdrawal.

A 2017 study funded by the British Cancer Research Organization (Cancer Research UK) showed that in the bodies of people who switched to electronic cigarettes, instead of regular cigarettes, for a period of at least 6 months, significantly lower levels of toxins and cancer-causing substances were found.

On the other hand, Ehud Abrahamson, an addiction rehab expert and the founder of the Abrahamson Institute, points out that a study conducted in the United States and including 13,000 participants showed that trying to quit cigarettes by smoking another product, including electronic cigarettes and vaping products, is not effective, and even leads to the opposite result. by John Pearce and colleagues, a professor of family medicine and public health at UC San Diego, indicated that among ex-smokers who tried to quit cigarettes using another type of tobacco or nicotine product, including an e-cigarette, only 41.5 percent remained "clean" during The second follow-up test In other words, their chance of successfully quitting e-cigarettes was 8.5 percent lower.

The apparently "clean" appearance and the absence of tobacco and smoke misleads users.

A man smoking (Photo: ShutterStock)

The Abrahamson Institute also points out that the seemingly "clean" appearance and the absence of tobacco and smoke misleads and misleads the users, since not only is it not a means of withdrawal for smokers, but the electronic cigarette is a means of entry for young people who have not smoked into the world of smoking.

According to him, there is a study based on more than 17 thousand smokers aged 14-30 who answered questions regarding their habits of using electronic cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes.

The main finding is that 30.4 percent of those who have ever used electronic cigarettes have also experimented with smoking tobacco, compared to only 7.9 percent of those who have never used electronic cigarettes at all - almost four times as many.

In fact, e-cigarette use has been found to be a higher risk factor for starting to smoke regular cigarettes even compared to cigarette smoking by parents, friends and siblings.

There is a certain risk of irreversible damage, even from a single smoke of an electronic cigarette

A study published in Radiology found that using an e-liquid vaporizer can cause damage to the user's blood vessels, even if they only inhaled the vapor once.

The study was designed to test how vaping affects the blood vessels and changes in blood flow in the femoral artery in the leg after using one vaping cigarette.

To test the changes, the experiment participants were taken for an MRI imaging test. The imaging was done twice - before and after the participants inhaled the liquid vapor from the electronic cigarette tank.

There is a connection between smoking an electronic cigarette and the development of attention disorders in teenagers

Electronic cigarettes contain nicotine, just like regular cigarettes.

Nicotine is an addictive substance at any age, but according to Prof. Ben-Ami Sela, from the Department of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, exposure of teenagers to it is even more severe because during adolescence the brain is particularly sensitive and therefore nicotine can cause addiction, disorders Attention to mood disorders (e.g. depression).

Beyond the effect on the brain, nicotine affects other processes in the body such as blood pressure and heart rate.

All of these can become long-term effects.

In fact, the risk inherent in them is even greater.

In an article published in Science Report, it is stated that 50 milligrams of nicotine must be included in the container of electronic cigarettes in order to have an effect similar to that obtained from nicotine in regular cigarettes, however today, in the absence of proper supervision, such cigarettes are sold in Israel that include a much higher proportion of nicotine.

Passive exposure to e-cigarette vapor is very dangerous

There is a belief that electronic cigarettes do not have a negative effect on the health of those who do not consume them and are in the immediate environment of smokers.

In practice, quite a few studies state that exposure to electronic cigarettes may cause the passive smoker an increased absorption of nicotine, depending on the size of the container containing the liquid.

The fetus can be harmed.

A pregnant woman (Photo: ShutterStock)

The Cancer Society states that known toxic and carcinogenic substances have been found in e-cigarette vapor, and passive exposure to these substances emitted during smoking can cause health problems, including damage to the respiratory system and the heart.

In addition, it was found that exposure to smoking electronic cigarettes can lead to the absorption of nicotine in an amount that significantly exceeds the absorption of nicotine from clean air.

This is a significant enough absorption to endanger populations that are vulnerable to the effects of nicotine, such as children and women of reproductive age.

impairs blood flow to the fetus

An electronic cigarette can cause damage to the fetus during pregnancy.

In a literature review of 91 articles regarding electronic cigarette smoking during pregnancy and the effect on the fetus, it was found that the level of nicotine consumed by electronic cigarette smokers is equivalent to that consumed by regular cigarette smokers.

It is also noted that the use of nicotine during pregnancy reduces the weight of the fetus by almost fifty percent and the size of the fetus (measured from the tip of the head to the tailbone) by almost 30 percent.

Also, the use of nicotine during pregnancy resulted in a decrease of over 65 percent in the blood flow in the fetus.

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