E-cigarette Vaporous Loaded With Toxic Metals: Study

It has come to light that e-cigarette vapours contain a significant amount of toxic metals, which can be dangerous. According to a study conducted by at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, significant amounts of toxic metals, including lead, leak from some e-cigarette heating coils and are present in the aerosols inhaled by users.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Feb, 2018 ) :It has come to light that e-cigarette vapours contain a significant amount of toxic metals, which can be dangerous. According to a study conducted by at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school of Public Health University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, significant amounts of toxic metals, including lead, leak from some e-cigarette heating coils and are present in the aerosols inhaled by users.

In the study, the scientists examined e-cigarette devices owned by a sample of 56 users. They found that significant numbers of the devices generated aerosols with potentially unsafe levels of lead, chromium, manganese and/or nickel.

Chronic inhalation of these metals has been linked to lung, liver, immune, cardiovascular and brain damage, and even cancers. "It's important for the FDA, the e-cigarette companies, and vapers themselves to know that these heating coils, as currently made, seem to be leaking toxic metals--which then get into the aerosols that vapers inhale," said senior author, Ana Mar'a Rule.

For the new study, Rule and her colleagues, including lead author Pablo Olmedo, recruited 56 daily e-cigarette users from vaping conventions and e-cigarette shops around Baltimore during the fall of 2015, Medical Daily reported.

Working with participants' devices, which they brought to the researchers' lab at the Bloomberg School, the scientists tested for the presence of 15 metals in the e-liquids in the vapers' refilling dispensers, the e-liquids in their coil-containing e-cigarette tanks and in the generated aerosols.

Consistent with prior studies, they found minimal amounts of metals in the e-liquids within refilling dispensers, but much larger amounts of some metals in the e-liquids that had been exposed to the heating coils within e-cigarette tanks.

The difference indicated that the metals almost certainly had come from the coils. Most importantly, the scientists showed that the metal contamination carried over to the aerosols produced by heating the e-liquids.

Almost 50 percent of aerosol samples had lead concentrations higher than health-based limits defined by the Environmental Protection Agency. Similarly, median aerosol concentrations of nickel, chromium and manganese approached or exceeded safe limits.

"These were median levels only," Rule said. "The actual levels of these metals varied greatly from sample to sample, and often were much higher than safe limits".