# The E-Cigarette Formaldehyde Study We've Been Waiting For is Here



## Alex (24/2/16)

* The E-Cigarette Formaldehyde Study We've Been Waiting For is Here *
February 23, 2016

News, Knowledge, Featured

Claims that e-cigarette aerosols contain dangerous concentrations of formaldehyde are still made often, despite the fact that this information is based on a study that many in the scientific community would like to see retracted due to poor methodology, unrealistic conditions, and the misinformation that has been passed on to the general public in its name. The questionable study used CE4 top-wicking clearomizers at voltages far exceeding the manufacturers maximum recommendation, and managed to produce some "formaldehyde-releasing agents" in the aerosol produced by them—and vapers have long been aware of this study and the reason its conclusions should be mostly ignored. A new study published in _Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology_, however, pits a CE4, a KangerTech Protank 1, an Innokin Gladius, an Aspire Nautilus, and a KangerTech Subtank against each other in an aldehyde showdown, and the results are actually a little surprising:






Image from Effect of variable power levels on the yield of total aerosol mass and formation of aldehydes in e-cigarette aerosols by I.G. Gillman et al.
Device names were added to chart for clarity (license).

What the above chart shows us is the expected exposure from vaping 3.0 mL of e-liquid in each of the tanks. And yes, a Subtank user is likely to vape more e-liquid per day than a Protank user, but in order to reach the OSHA maximum workplace allowance for daily inhaled formaldehyde of about 5.3 mg, you'd have to go through about 408 mL in a single day at 25 watts in a Subtank—and you'd still be at an exposure level considered safe for a worker. These results suggest advanced tanks that handle high power may produce far fewer grams of aldehyde per gram of vapor, and they also clearly show how poor a choice those CE4s are for research at higher voltage. At 3.8 volts, which was the lowest voltage applied to the CE4s in this study, they were already churning out much higher aldehyde levels than all the bottom-wicking tanks (about 35 times more formaldehyde per puff than their nearest competitor!). It should also be noted that this study was partly funded _a portion of the equipment used for this study was provided _by Innokin Technology and Evolv, but it was not conducted by them. You can check out the whole paper free of charge right here, and you can learn more about carcinogens, heat, temperature, and e-liquid here.

Link to full study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230015301549#

source: http://blog.thedripclub.com/the-e-c...een-waiting-for-is-here#.VszljnewSKI.facebook

Reactions: Like 2 | Winner 5 | Thanks 1 | Informative 2


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## Stevape;) (24/2/16)

I must start print out these reports and keep them on me as there are still soooo many uneducated people out there and to them ignorance is bliss. They heard something somewhere so in their minds ecigs are as bad as analogs and thats it. It drives me up the wall.

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 1


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## Silver (24/2/16)

Very interesting @Alex
Thanks for sharing with us

So a Nautilus at 11Watts produces about 0.08 mg of total aldehydes for 3ml of juice. If I understand the article correctly, to get a safe limit dosage of 5.3mg in a day would then require about 198ml of juice to be vaped in that setup in a day. Lol, thats virtually impossible. Good to know. I assume the Nautilus would be similar to the nautilus mini. Long live the nautilus mini. Hehe.

Something interesting I noticed from their stats is that the standard deviation measure in some of their readings is sometimes very high compared to the average. For example, the nautilus at 11Watts has formaldehyde average of 0.06 but a standard deviation of 0.07, which is actually higher. This would suggest that either their measurement equipment or the vape devices are quite inconsistent. I wonder about that. Need to read the full article. Anyone else have any views on that?

Reactions: Like 1


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## Alex (24/2/16)

Silver said:


> Very interesting @Alex
> Thanks for sharing with us
> 
> So a Nautilus at 11Watts produces about 0.08 mg of total aldehydes for 3ml of juice. If I understand the article correctly, to get a safe limit dosage of 5.3mg in a day would then require about 198ml of juice to be vaped in that setup in a day. Lol, thats virtually impossible. Good to know. I assume the Nautilus would be similar to the nautilus mini. Long live the nautilus mini. Hehe.
> ...



@Silver I was going to post the full study, but it's just to large, with many tables. You would love it 

*5. Conclusion*
The range of aerosol produced on a per puff basis ranged from 1.5 to 28 mg or approximately a 17-fold increase. The range of aerosol produced normalized for power applied to the coil ranged from 0.27 to 1.1 mg/watt or a 3.1-fold increase. From these results, it is clear that it is impossible to accurately estimate EC aerosol yield based on the coil resistance alone and that calculations based on power applied to the coil can only estimate the EC aerosol yield.

The trapped aerosol was also analyzed for aldehydes, as DNPH derivatives, produced during EC aerosol formation. The amount of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acrolein produced per puff ranged from 0.05 to 17 μg, 0.03–8.3 μg and <0.02–2.0 μg respectively. The amount of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acrolein produced per gram of total aerosol produced ranged from 0.01 to 7.3 mg/g, 0.006–5.8 mg/g, and <0.003–0.78 mg/g, respectively. Our results demonstrate that the amount of aldehydes in EC aerosols varies by device and the power applied to the atomizer coil. An increase in the efficiency of aerosol production with increasing power supplied to the atomizer was correlated with lower levels of aldehydes in the EC aerosol.

Formaldehyde and acrolein yields for one device exceeded both the yield from combustible cigarettes (20 per day) and the OSHA limit at the maximum power level tested, produced formaldehyde almost 10 times the OSHA workplace exposure limit. However, three of the five devices studied yielded less formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acrolein than delivered by combustible cigarettes and also less than an 8-h occupation exposure limit. Our results demonstrate that large differences exist in the EC devices available in the market place, and that, depending on the device, changes in power applied to the atomizer can have dramatic, but different, impacts on both total aerosol yield and the formation of aldehyde compounds in the EC aerosol, with some devices far more capable than others of maximizing liquid aerosolization while minimizing thermal decomposition at higher power levels.

The high levels of aldehyde formation seen in Device 1 could be due, in part, to the formulation or viscosity of the test liquid used in this study. The composition of the liquid may have an impact on the rate at which liquid is transferred to the coil and also the formation of aldehydes. The purpose of this study was to compare different devices and power levels using a simple PG and GLY liquid formulation. Similar e-liquids are widely used both by consumers and by previous researchers. Repeating the analysis using different liquids formulations was beyond the scope of this study. However, it would be of interest for future studies to compare the results of the formulation used here with nicotine solutions using only PG, or various PG, GLY and water mixtures, including liquids that contain popular flavor compounds. There are some caveats to studying this: mixtures with a different composition or components may change the boiling point of the e-liquid and may impact the yield of EC devices, and flavor compounds themselves may have wide variance in propensity for thermal decomposition. Another interesting and important consideration for future studies would be direct measurement of the temperature of the coil during activation to better understand what coil temperatures lead to decomposition, but this was technologically beyond the scope of this study. Finally, we only measured the levels of three aldehydes, and there could be other toxic substances produced, including propionaldehyde (Dai et al., 2004) and free-radicals, which have been detected previously at low levels in EC emissions (Goel et al., 2015 and Sussan et al., 2015). Since these thermal decomposition processes (pyrolysis) have been shown to involved formation of free-radical species during dehydration steps of PG and GLY on the pathway to aldehydes (Dai et al., 2004 and Paine et al., 2007), it is possible that these free-radicals would be detected at levels commensurate with the amounts of aldehydes being produced. However, this also was technologically beyond the scope of this study. One also needs to consider that, in terms of actual risks from aldehyde toxicity to the user, it is very possible that when significant thermal decomposition of an EC liquid is occurring, commonly called the dry-puff phenomenon (Farsalinos et al., 2015), the aerosol produced may be quite noxious, and cause the user to discontinue use until the dry-puff issue is resolved. More quantitative analysis of actual aldehyde production under human usage conditions should be done in the future, since it is possible that a user would avoid inhalation of EC aerosols under significant thermal decomposition conditions. Also, the aldehydes present in EC aerosol have been shown by others to be a mixture of the free aldehydes along with hydrate, acetal and hemiacetal forms. The health effect due to the inhalation of this mixture of complexed aldehydes relative to free aldehydes is currently unknown and warrants further study It is also possible that these hydrates, acetals and hemiacetals convert back to free aldehydes _in vivo_ through hydrolysis, which is in principle possible under the aqueous and slightly basic conditions of the lungs ( Funderburk et al., 1978), however to our knowledge this has not been studied under physiological conditions.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Cespian (24/2/16)

Thanks so much for this @Alex 

My mom has been fighting with me about this exact topic for months... I have already kept her at bay about the whole popcorn lung thing. 

Great success!

Reactions: Like 2


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## Silver (24/2/16)

Thanks @Alex

I will go read the full article when i get a chance. I did read the conclusion above and they dont refer to the high std dev measures. 

What I also found interesting about their conclusion is their discussion of the things they didnt do in their study. Just shows that this is a complex area and way more research needs to be done. Also interesting that what they are measuring outside the body in their experiments can change in the lungs. Yet another angle of complexity.

I just hope that the top medical teams and scientists can put their heads together and figure it all out.

In the meantime, what this is reinforcing to me is as follows:

avoid dry puffs 
and when in doubt, its safer to be on lower power

Reactions: Like 1


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## NewOobY (24/2/16)

very interesting read man, thanks @Alex. Sheesh how do you find this stuff man, it's awesome and makes my day go quicker 



Stevape;) said:


> I must start print out these reports and keep them on me as there are still soooo many uneducated people out there and to them ignorance is bliss. They heard something somewhere so in their minds ecigs are as bad as analogs and thats it. It drives me up the wall.



Dude sadly people in general are stubborn by nature, hence you stating there was another study disproving the original by some margin would fall on deaf ears man. People hear what they want to hear, and equally frustrating is they believe what they want to believe - this applies no matter what evidence you provide etc.

Imagine how crazy it must of been for the world when they realized the world was in fact not flat and had more of a rounder shape. People died for that belief man - least we won't get killed for believing that vaping is much more safe than smoking.



Silver said:


> Thanks @Alex
> 
> I will go read the full article when i get a chance. I did read the conclusion above and they dont refer to the high std dev measures.
> 
> ...



Agreed 100% about the dry puffs, problem with lower power is "it just don't taste the same "

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 1


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## Stevape;) (24/2/16)

@NewOobY whats this talk about the world not being flat??

Reactions: Funny 3


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## rogue zombie (24/2/16)

Thank you @Alex for finding this.

I must admit, this was the one thing I worried about... when I wasn't using the Reo. Since I only drip, I always feel the cotton getting dry, and was a teensy bit paranoid of the possible dry-hit.

Its good to put things in prospective and get educated.

Reactions: Like 3


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