E-CIGARETTE / VAPER, WHAT I THINK
E-cigarette / vaper, what do you think?
Recently, a new toy or substitute for cigarette is growing fast like the mushrooms especially among the teenagers. There are a lot of misleading information spreading around and claim that e-cigarette is less harmful compare to traditional cigarettes or even harmless to our bodies. People only start to realize and notice its harm after the recent case of vaper explosion happened to a young man in the United Kingdom.
So, what is an e-cigarette and is it harmful to us?
E-cigarette is a battery operated device designed to deliver nicotine with flavours (although some may claim that they do not contain nicotine) or other chemicals to users in vapour instead of smoke. Hence, the new word of “vaping” has been created to replace “smoking”.
As there are no laws to govern e-cigarettes, there are more than 200 brands of vaper and its liquid available in the Malaysia nowadays. Tricks and misleading labels on the e-cigarettes have been used by the manufacturers and sellers to attract more young people to take up this bad habit of vaping.
Sad to say, unlike traditional cigarettes, there are no control on the contents of the vaper liquid, the labeling of the vaper as well as the liquid refill, the flavourings and the nicotine content in the liquid. Hence, the dangerous of vaper is practically due to unknown contents of the vaping liquid in the vaper. These chemicals are known to increase the risk of getting pneumonia or even lung cancer. Besides, e-cigarettes deliver high levels of nanoparticles, the researchers found, which can trigger inflammation and have been linked to asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes.
The main content of the liquid solution is the nicotine (main ingredient that causes addiction), propylene glycol (chemical use for antifreeze) and some other toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde (chemical used to preserve dead body), as well as toxic metal particles, colourings and flavourings contain in the liquid.
Even without looking at the scientific paper of vaper research, we can positively say that vaping will cause harm to our bodies. We can imagine that by inhaling so much of different chemicals into our lung, it has nothing different comparing to direct ingestion of these chemical liquid.
Converting from smoking to vaping is like getting yourself into a tiger cave when coming out from a dragon nest. Until more data we can get from researchers, as a pharmacist, I will strongly recommend a smoker to quit totally from smoking and not converting him/herself to e-cigarettes.
