10 common questions about e-cigarettes answered

I have to say my husband start E cigarettes but honestly I feel so sick with smoke , I get headache,sore throats,eyes burning and get sticky eyes. And it’s all happening with my husband E cig. . I don’t smoke at all. Can you please let me know what to do

I am 50 years old and my story is not a scientific but like that; I started e cigarette early 2015 and after 6 months I felt fel down sleep like sleep apnea or what else but I felt so healty, no pain at lung, no breathless and all perfect condition, so I started to I fel down sleep when I look my phone, tv or also talking with someone, I made serious car accident but god and vw help us and all we are fine with my family, so I started doctor for check my problem, they decided sleep apnea in may 2016, my e cigarette had a failure in june, so I started again ciagarette and order a new e-cigarette, after 2 months I realized that I haven’t sleep apnea or what else, nothing chane in my life without stopped e-cigarette, maybe this is really coincidence but now I am so good, that’s all…..

E-cigarettes are not risk-free, but research by Public Health England has estimated they are at least 95 percent safer than traditional tobacco cigarettes. They’ve already proven an effective tool for many smokers seeking to quit, and their broader use has tremendous potential to improve public health.

if we add something in cigar which present of fire react with nicotine and separate C,N,H. Can we do this?

Rob, I have asthma and it is triggered by PG , amonst various other common chemicals . And yes, PG is in my asthma inhaler. It is increasibngly widely used by the pharmaceutical industry, much to my consternation. I am not at all conceerned that somebody might vape a PG, containing e cig in my vicinity, I am however ver y worried that the paranoia-induced over-regulation of e cigs might limit the available choices to the poibnt that the Pg -free alternatives go from hard-to -find to nonexistent. Alison, I hope this also helps to answer your query? I might add that nobody has yet sought to ban or restrict the use of chlorine bleach as a cleaning agent in public places including hospitals! The fumes from this cause me far worse problems than PG vapour does . Please, people, do a me a favour , and try to identify the real issues before smothering me in concern for my wellbeing. I don’t mean you two. You do seem to be making an effort , but you don’t seem to have twigged that this focus on the possible evils of vaping is founded on prejudice , not reality. if p[eople put a fraction of such concern into what is in household chemicals and whether it is reasonable to inflict the fumes on all and sundry , then my life might become substantially easier. Why not worry about the latter? ?Because vaping is evil, and cleaning the floor isn’t evil, no more logic to it than that.

Just wonder if the vapour would affect people with breathing problems?

A billion lives will soon rip the carpet from beneath the ney sayers feet. Every negative ‘scientific’ study on ecigs has been debunked spectacularly. Whereas the positive ones just have the bandwagon brigade wagging their fingers with no evidence to back their nonsense up.

I also had to chuckle at someone using asthma as the reason they couldn’t breath around ecig vapour. Doesn’t ejuice contain PG? Conincidently, so do asthma inhalers…

I find that using an e tank makes you cough up oil so I choose the e cig type as you are not inhaling all that oil!
And I use a brand where the liquid has been tested and is made in the UK.

Totally Agree with you that e-cig are the safe option as compared to traditional smoking. Switch to e-cig by shopping for best E-cig starter kits available at -dikudi.com

Cool

E-cigarettes are in fact perfectly safe, I myself have been vaping for over 2 years after being a smoker for over 20 years, my health has improved immensely, I no longer get wheezy, I no longer wake up with a dry mouth or coughing, my taste has improved dramatically, I am enjoying food a hell of a lot more now than I did in 20 years of smoking, my children no longer complain of the smell or of the smoke.

Is there any side effect or smell for use of ecig liquid

well define step by step, I love it. It looks great, fits great and vapes even better.

Stephanie re:diacetyl. Cigarettes contain hundreds of time more diacetyl than any ecig does. Yet smokers don’t get popcorn lung. This is believed to be due to diacetyl only being dangerous in its solid/powder form (the form that popcorn workers were exposed to), not when vaporized like in an ecig or regular cig. Even so, many liquids contain no diacetyl, since many suppliers voluntarily removed it to be on the safe side.

I’ve bought my sister an Ecigs starter kit she was a heavy smoker and quite recently nearly died on life support for nine weeks she has chronic lung condition.

Has any one heard of a condition called pop corn lung from a chemical in e cigarettes. The chemical is called Diacatyl. I as a parent of teenagers worry as there are a large number of children smoking e cigarettes who have not smoked ordinary cigarettes. I have been informed that this chemical can damage the inning of the lungs and is irreversible . Should schools be informing young people about this if it is fact so they can make an informed choice.

Regarding no.10 – second hand vapour can be dangerous, however only to a small minority of people that are allergic to propylene glycol (PG). This is why one should be mindful of vaping around others.

Tam Bee: sorry you don’t like facts.

I found tis article informative.As my wife has COPD we were concerned about the effects of “Second Hand” smoke.this has dispelled those worries Many thanks CRUK

i had lung cancer and my 5 years will be up nov 24th this year i smoke e cig 2.4 strenth and it hasnt done me any harm except the goverment want to lower the strenth on these which i think its none of his buisiness

Get a grip, CRUK!.
“there’s no evidence that second-hand e-cigarette vapour is dangerous to others.”
For years, the tobacco industry consistently lied through its front teeth, assuring everyone that there was no evidence of tobacco use and ‘second-hand smoking’ being harmful. My children and I have as little desire to inhale sevond-hand vapour/smoke than the vapers/smokers would desire to inhale my flatulence. If these obnoxious nicotine substitutes are the best you can do to help smokers beat their addiction, then you really aren’t making much progress, are you?

i must admit that being a laryngetomy if my son or grandson vape around me that it tends to cause problems with my breathing and also have a bit of blood there because it irretates

It took 50 years + to draw a conclusion as to the fact that smoking cigarettes causes cancer from epidemiological data yet the perceived opinion is E-cigarettes are better than normal cigarettes so it’s ok where is the data as to long term affects and as a non smoker who could go into a pub etc without any smoke or vapour the rise of vaping will now mean that won’t be the case the science on this is very limited and the conclusions made at best wishful thinking in my opinion given that there is clearly no epedimiological data as yet and the multiple toxins found interact in complex ways that cannot at this juncture possibly be scientifically proven as far as long term exposure is concerned.
The danger is that rather than simply getting people off smoking the blind acceptance of vaping will have long term consequences that nobody can foresee at this point.

It’s a scientific based report so hardly disgusting. We are eating and drinking chemicals everyday of our lives. We know that cigarette smoking is one of the most dangerous things we can do. I’m surprised the license for manufacturing them hasn’t been revoked before now! Oh and and learn to spell the word is ‘weak’ not ‘week’ that’s the days of the week as in Monday etc.

I disagree with Number 10! I have been affected by e-cigarettes (in a non smoking wooden bird hide) by an obnoxious user, who thought it was so hilarious that I could not breathe. I had recently recovered from multiple blood clots in both lungs and had trouble breathing at the best of times, however, she decided it would be fun to make me suffer and find is so amusing. Not the only time I have been affected, in a pub, man puffing huge clouds out, it made our party of 6 suffer, one has asthma also.

Disgusting report, how long will we wait and how much harm will be caused before saying it is dangerous to health, why do we have to put up with week and selfish people’s dirty habits ?

Extremely helpful, THANK YOU.

I dont think I could have quit my 30 a day habit without my e-cig. Havent smoked for 4 years now.

As a non-smoker I still find it pretty disgusting to encounter e-cig smokers in public places. I hope that vapers will graduate onto not having to suck on anything at all. Some vapers do have the attitude that because it is not tobacco then they can vape anywhere, and it is precisely that attitude that needs to be suppressed.

I have passed many drivers both on motorways and rural roads with their E machines (for want of a better term) pouring out vast amount of smoke! It makes me wonder if they can really see to drive! Also walking behind people with these going and on small pavement space I wonder how much one inhales and as you report it doesn’t cause problems I’m not convinced. If it helps to give up great but please think of others about you.

Hi,have been smoking for a number of years and I started using an e cigarette 8 months ago,and have not smoked since.i think that thay very good I have tried other products put have never stop until now.i would recommend them to other people and it has worked for them.And I have saved money which never did before.

A very interesting and useful article on e-cigarettes. I failed to get my sister-in-law to switch from cigarettes, which is a pity. At our local community centre and youth club we do not allow e-cigarettes because we want smoking to be socially unacceptable.

Good range of information. I would like to have “shared” the article on Facebook, but I couldn’t see this as an option

Found this very interesting. I stopped over 11 years ago with willpower but still crave at times but would not go back.

Great to see this sort of article on CRUK, I quit smoking 18 months ago thanks to ecigs. I had smoked for 12 years and failed to quit several times using alternative methods such as gum and patches etc. I don’t think I could ever have given up without using ecigs

My concern is that this sort of of article and the research it references have all come a bit late, from what I’m reading about the new EU laws that came in on 20/5/16 the ecig market has been pretty much strangled.
https://www.redvape.com/blog/tobacco-product-directive-tpd-a-simple-guide

@Prof Preben Aavitsland

When you reference a study done (or even touched) by Stanton Glantz you immediately become laughable.

The man is a charlatan who has absolutely ZERO medical knowledge (mechanical engineer) and is a big pharma funded shill who will do anything to protect his own/his universities INSANELY lucrative funding streams. This includes BLATANTLY manipulating studies/figures to generate the result HE wants. Simply put, he and his type are a danger to public health.

No surprise to see a post from Simon Chapman either, yet another ‘champion of public health’ or more accurately “champion of whatever cause pays the most today”. After-all he’s a self-proclaimed “expert in marketing and public manipulation via media sources.” He also, conveniently, has no actual medical education, but he sure is good at finding/linking studies that support his views.

There are now MILLIONS of people worldwide who have either reduced or completely quit smoking via e-cigs (including me, 3 years on July 13th), that’s a positive ‘public health gain’ no matter how you look at it.

People like Mr. Glantz and Mr. Chapman call us ‘anecdotes’, when in reality we’re just people trying not to die horrible cancer related deaths or at the very least trying to GREATLY reduce the harm done by our nicotine addiction/consumption.

It seems quite perplexing that two men, such “champions of public health”, would fight so hard against something that has been shown, with a decent level a certainty, to be beneficial to millions of people.

‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’

I am sorry prof Aavitsland but you do not know what you are talking about as I am a living example together with thousands of others that e-cigs do stop you smoking.

Do e-cigarettes help you quit smoking?
Harm to smokers will be reduced only if they switch to e-cigarettes. If the switch does not occur, it remains irrelevant that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.

The evidence that e-cigarettes really help smokers stop smoking is scarce (1). In fact, the most recent review (2) indicates that e-cigarettes may make it harder to quit smoking: It’s easier to quit smoking without the help of e-cigarettes.

Thus, the e-cigarette may not solve the problem that some English colleagues argue that it will. Instead, a liberal regulatory framework may, coupled with intensive marketing, increase the exposure of new, smokefree generations to an extensive and highly addictive product that they do not need at all.

References:
1. McRobbie H, Bullen C, Hartmann-Boyce J, Hajek P. Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation and reduction. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2014; 12: CD010216. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25515689)
2. Kalkhoran S, Glantz SA. E-cigarettes and smoking cessation in real-world and clinical settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Respir Med 2016; 4: 116-28. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26776875)

I was a life long smoker until four years ago and discovered ecigs. With in two weeks of using the ecig I had stopped smoking and have not had a cigarette since. If people want to ban ecigs then they should ban all secession items.

Dr McEwen’s bald statement “Nicotine doesn’t cause smoking-related diseases, such as cancers and heart disease” needs to be read in context against the International Agency for Research in Cancer’s list of “high priority” topics for its 2015-2019 research monographs on carcinogenicity (“Nicotine—increasing population exposure via electronic nicotine delivery systems; recent mechanistic data suggest an association with DNA damage and other pathways of carcinogenesis) Lancet Oncology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(14)70168-8
Recent examples of health risk studies include http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012369216485624 showing that both cigarettes and ecigarettes caused “a significant increase” in several measures of oxidative stress (although ecigarettes caused less) and this one suggesting that ecigarettes may be a risk factor for asthma in youth. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151022

I am very surprised that CRUK published McEwen’s statement

Brilliant I have used e cigarettes for 2 years now and it the best thing I ever did but reading this there stuff I didn’t know about vaping and smoking

Thank you!

After next Friday, what would you recommend to a heavy ex-smoker, since patches do not provide the necessary throat-hit: buying higher strength e-liquid from the black market with the risk of contamination or buying tobacco cigarettes from a well controlled supplier and try to smoke as little as possible?

Hi Patrick,
Thanks for your comment.
The possibility that e-cigarettes may renormalise smoking is a big area of debate, but evidence so far shows this is not the case. Experimentation with e-cigarettes in people who have never smoked remains low and coincides with the continuing decline in youth smoking rates. So as things stand, arguments about renormalisation and e-cigarettes being a gateway to taking up smoking aren’t backed up by evidence. In terms of advertising, the new e-cigarette legislation that will be implemented on Friday (the revised Tobacco Products Directive) will put stricter regulations on e-cigarette marketing and advertising. We are carrying out research to monitor the impact of these regulations, and are closely monitoring the involvement of the tobacco industry.
Best wishes,
Nick, Cancer Research UK

I quit smoking 27 months ago when I started using e-cigs(refillable tank). My Doctor noticed an improvement after 1 month, and my Eye Doctor during an eye exam remarked, ‘I see you quit smoking’ He could tell by looking inside my eyes. I live in Canada where a pack of 25 cigarettes cost $12. E-cigs pay for my yearly trip to Cuba

Thank you Dr McEwen. I’m amazed and delighted to find this article on the CRUK website. Unfortunately, as Rob mentioned, the TPD will nullify much of the progress that has been made in getting vaping accepted. If taken at its word, currently available tank systems may be prohibited on grounds of leakage during filling. Back in April 2014, CRUK was celebrating the TPD.
http://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/04/14/eu-tobacco-products-directive-10-reasons-why-its-good-news-for-public-health/

A very useful blog, based on current available evidence. One issue it doesn’t address is the possible impact on attitudes to smoking. Is there a danger that the use of e-cigarettes may re-normailse smoking as socially acceptable? Also, the way the tobacco companies, who increasingly own the producers of e-cigarettes, advertise their use is very reminiscent of the way they promoted cigarettes back in the 1950’s and 60’s and, similarly, there is no long-term studies of the impact of the use of e-cigarettes. They are clearly a useful aid to help smokers stop smoking so should they therefore be regulated in the same way as other such products?

Congratulations on this well thought out and considered guidance.
One point I would like to make is that in section 7. entitled How should I use my e-cigarette to help me to stop smoking? you state “If you find you’ve got it in your mouth all the time, you might need to use a stronger e-liquid.”
This was the case in my experience, the recommended 18mg strength was insufficient and resulted in an excessive liquid consumption and hence an increase in exposure to any harmful elements contained in it. I was successful in decreasing the frequency of use, and thus my liquid consumption by increasing the nicotine concentration to 36mg.
As from the 20th of May this year the maximum nicotine concentration allowed under the EU TPD will be 20 mg/ml (realistically 18mg) so the option of a higher strength liquid will not be available to those who need it. The official advise it to use a nicotine patch in conjunction with a vapour device, but I fear for many it will be far simpler just to slide out a cigarette and light it.