E-Cigarette Health Warning

Always be very wary of anyone who repeats a quote something like “Smokers smoke for the nicotine, but die from the tar” – when you hear this you know immediately that they either work for the nicotine industry, and what they are trying to do is to direct your attention away from the fact that nicotine is a key player in the development of cancers and lung disease, OR they are just mindlessly repeating something that they have heard – without investigating the facts any further.

The purpose of that expression is to project an image of nicotine as being ‘whiter than white’ so that the industry can continue to exploit the addiction like dependency that quickly kicks in with the regular use of nicotine, – whilst blaming the unimaginably high number of deaths arising from nicotine inhalation on the tar that is inhaled from the combustion of tobacco (deaths worldwide attributed to tobacco estimated to be equivalent to one jumbo jet crashing every hour, 24/7, with no survivors - i.e. 5.4 million people a year worldwide).¹

In fact, research over the last decade has identified nicotine's carcinogenic potential in animal models and cell culture. Nicotine has been noted to directly cause cancer through a number of different mechanisms such as the activation of MAP Kinases. Indirectly, nicotine increases cholinergic signalling (and adrenergic signalling in the case of colon cancer), thereby impeding apoptosis (programmed cell death), promoting tumor growth, and activating growth factors and cellular mitogenic factors such as 5-LOX, and EGF. Nicotine also promotes cancer growth by stimulating angiogenesis and neovascularization. In one study, nicotine administered to mice with tumors caused increases in tumor size (twofold increase), metastasis (nine-fold increase), and tumor recurrence (threefold increase).²

What smokers aren’t being told about nicotine based e-cigarettes is that when they switch from ‘smoking’ to ‘vaping’ there remains in their lungs huge amounts of tar comprising the estimated 4000 toxic chemicals that you are supposed to not get with electronic cigarettes. That tar typically takes 10-20 years to fully ‘disperse’.³

The fact is that the vast majority of lung cancer cases occur not in smokers, but in ex-smokers. For example, something like 50% of diagnosed lung cancers occur in ex-smokers who last smoked 10 or more years before their diagnosis.⁴

So when you switch from a tobacco cigarette to an electronic cigarette all you are doing is to continue to bathe the tar and toxins that remain in your lungs with nicotine, with all of its cancer promoting qualities.

So, when vaping, you might well be less smelly, your skin might not yellow, and you might 'feel' fitter without all of the carbon monoxide in your bloodstream, and you might have more money in your pocket because e-cigs are cheaper etc. etc.

BUT, the bottom line is that there is every reason to believe that the likelihood of suffering a terminal lung disease such as lung cancer, or copd, are absolutely no different to if you had continued smoking tobacco - because of the continued interaction between the inhaled nicotine and the 4000 toxic chemicals present in the tar that remains in an ex-smoker’s lungs.

And the other thing that smokers are not being told is that quitting smoking/vaping is actually relatively painless and easy – smokers only find it difficult because they believe what the nicotine industry tells them - that they are addicted and that quitting is going to be difficult !⁵

Many ex-smokers who believe that they have quit smoking will in fact have switched to e-cigarettes believing them to be ‘safe’ – and yet their prognosis with respect to likelihood of lung cancer and copd will, realistically, remain unchanged (also, nicotine has other harmful effects on the heart and blood pressure).

The scandal is that the use of e-cigarettes for nicotine inhalation is being pushed onto smokers as being an acceptable and safe alternative to smoking - without the predictable negative consequences being fully acknowledged and explained. This means that the users and vapers of these devices are not able to make an informed choice between the two approaches of either switching from smoking to e-cigarettes, or of quitting smoking for good.

Update - 22nd January 2014:-

Preclinical study suggests E-cigarettes may promote lung cancer in high-risk individuals

At the AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on the Molecular Origins of Lung Cancer, held Jan. 6–9 2014, preliminary results of a preclinical study were presented that suggested that exposing human lung cells with genetic mutations associated with high risk for lung cancer to the chemicals in electronic-cigarette (e-cigarette) vapor enhanced the cells' cancerous behaviors.⁶

1st published 22nd July 2013

Sources

1. Health Effects of Tobacco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco

2. Nicotine Promotes Cancer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9598-how-nicotine-helps-cancer-grow.html#.Uex1dqNwY6Z

3. Smoking's Impact on the Lungs

http://whyquit.com/joel/joel_02_17_smoke_in_lung.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1226461/Why-ALL-smokers-test---theyre-brave-enough.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2366641/Even-healthy-looking-smokers-cell-damage-genetic-level-lead-lung-cancer.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2197430/Electronic-cigarettes-damage-lungs-cause-oxygen-absorbed-blood.html

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/general-e-smoking-discussion/374556-anyone-noticed-film-windows-where-you-vape-2.html

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/10/12/with-lung-cancer-quitters-do-better-than-smokers/

http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/nonsmall-cell-lung-cancer

http://lungcancer.about.com/b/2011/03/02/former-smokers-at-risk-for-lung-cancer-decades-later.htm

http://umm.edu/health/medical/reports/articles/nonsmall-cell-lung-cancer

4. Some 50% of diagnosed lung cancers occur in ex-smokers who last smoked 10 or more years before their diagnosis

http://www.cardiothoracicsurgery.org/content/6/1/19

http://lungcancer.about.com/b/2011/03/02/former-smokers-at-risk-for-lung-cancer-decades-later.htm

http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update0905a.shtml

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/half-of-lung-cancer-patients-were-exsmokers-research-finds-29812839.html

http://lungcancer.about.com/b/2011/03/02/former-smokers-at-risk-for-lung-cancer-decades-later.htm

5. Most successful way of stopping smoking is non-nicotine cold turkey or psychotherapy - but not encouraged by the NHS

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000216

http://allencarr.com/133/ash-apologise-to-allen-carrs-easyway 

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19940803&id=zm4fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YHwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5242,2108301

6. Preclinical study suggests E-cigarettes may promote lung cancer in high-risk individuals

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-01-preclinical-e-cigarettes-lung-cancer-high-risk.html