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There are potentially hundreds of chemicals in e-cigarettes that could be contributing to DNA damage, Kadimisetty says. Rather than test for all of them, the UConn team targeted three known carcinogenic chemicals found in tobacco cigarettes.
Yup, well, here
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssensors.7b00118
is more info on the 3D printed sensor and the the UConvict is unfortunately the University of Connecticut....
Makes me wonder if they tried running water through the instruments first to get a baseline. The graph makes no sense.This graphic from the report is rather interesting:
View attachment 97868
It appears that the graphs represent (L to R): traditional cigarette (TC), non-filter traditional cigarette (nf-TC), electronic cigarette (EC), no-nicotine electronic cigarette (nn-EC). As we can see, the no-nicotine e-juice results in just over 100 "DNA damage units" (for want of a better term) while the nicotine e-juice results in around 400 DNA damage units. Would the research team be willing to go on record that, according to their study, 3/4 of the cancer risk from e-cigarettes stems from the nicotine in the juice? I don't see any other way that it can be interpreted. Presumably both the EC and nn-EC setups used the same coil, same cotton, same wattage, same juice but just sans nic in the one setup. So what, other than the nic, could be causing the damage units to quadruple from one test to the next? Are they saying that medical science has had it wrong all these years and that nic is the most carcinogenic substance in smoking and vaping?
confirmation bias
noun
- the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
Agreed 100%. I don't for a second believe that vaping is absolutely harmless (and I don't think anyone's ever claimed that it is). But to equate the harm to that of combustible cigarette smoke is a stretch without figures backing it up, in my opinion. The problem immediately manifests itself when you say "vaping has the same carcinogenic effect as smoking with these 3 chemicals". But what about all the other chemicals in cigarette smoke? Are they just there for moral support to the nasty 3?I tried to read the full paper but I couldn't access it, I could only get the abstract. However, this study makes no sense to me. I can see how, by cherry-picking which chemicals to test, the results could be manipulated. It is well known that even though vapour has far fewer nasties than smoke and even though most of the nasties are at much lower levels than in smoke, there are some which are high in vapour. The latest research into aldehydes indicates that, at high temperatures, vapour contains at least as many aldehydes as smoke, maybe more. There may be one or two others as well. So let's say we isolate eight carcinogens in smoke and we get the following figures for smoke (first figure) and vapour (second figure):
1. 4657, 918
2. 8745, 33
3. 1351, 7
4. 35, 37
5. 8512, 1715
6. 75, 83
7. 951, 175
8. 221, 212
But we only test for the three in red. So yeah, you find that smoke and vapour have about the same amount of carcinogens - IF you only test those three cherry-picked carcinogens. Of course, if you tested all 8 and total up all the carcinogens, you get a very different result. So I can understand how they can manipulate the result that way to reach a pre-determined conclusion.
What I don't get is how they obtain such a staggering result on carcinogens from nic. The ONLY difference between the two vaping setups is that one has nic juice, the other 0mg juice. The juice with nic produces 4x as many carcinogens. So the carcinogens MUST be coming from the nic. That contradicts everything that science has concluded so far about nic not being carcinogenic.
That said, I wouldn't dismiss this study out of hand. This is a new technology, a new methodology, a new way of looking at things. There could be several explanations. Perhaps the technology is not mature enough to be reliable yet. Perhaps there were methodology flaws, like the vaping gear being run at temps of 400C as has happened before. Perhaps DNA damage potentially causing cancer doesn't translate into (this type of) DNA damage actually causing cancer. Perhaps the results need further analysis. Perhaps they are picking up something that science hasn't been able to pick up before. It would need other labs to repeat the experiment, and other scientists to peer review the methodology and findings.
There are some things that trouble me, though. For starters, there is no test data. They say that one e-juice had nic in. But at what ratio? 3mg? 18mg? 50mg? What flavourings were used? What temps were run? They make a big deal of equating 20 vaping puffs to one cigarette. But I can't see how that matters. From the graph I posted above, all four appear to have been tested at 20, 60 and 100 puffs. So what is the relevance of 20 puffs = 1 cig if all four were tested on a puff-for-puff basis? What is the significance of carcinogens increasing the more puffs you take? That is self-evident, no?
That doesn't mean that the test results are invalid or that there is something fishy afoot. But in science, as in all things, we need the whole truth and not a summary that omits key information. I get that they can't provide all the data in a media article that is a dumbed-down summary intended for the lay person. But that data needs to be made available to Dr Farsalinos and others that they can analyse it and understand how these results were reached.
I tried to read the full paper but I couldn't access it, I could only get the abstract. However, this study makes no sense to me. I can see how, by cherry-picking which chemicals to test, the results could be manipulated. It is well known that even though vapour has far fewer nasties than smoke and even though most of the nasties are at much lower levels than in smoke, there are some which are high in vapour. The latest research into aldehydes indicates that, at high temperatures, vapour contains at least as many aldehydes as smoke, maybe more. There may be one or two others as well. So let's say we isolate eight carcinogens in smoke and we get the following figures for smoke (first figure) and vapour (second figure):
1. 4657, 918
2. 8745, 33
3. 1351, 7
4. 35, 37
5. 8512, 1715
6. 75, 83
7. 951, 175
8. 221, 212
But we only test for the three in red. So yeah, you find that smoke and vapour have about the same amount of carcinogens - IF you only test those three cherry-picked carcinogens. Of course, if you tested all 8 and total up all the carcinogens, you get a very different result. So I can understand how they can manipulate the result that way to reach a pre-determined conclusion.
What I don't get is how they obtain such a staggering result on carcinogens from nic. The ONLY difference between the two vaping setups is that one has nic juice, the other 0mg juice. The juice with nic produces 4x as many carcinogens. So the carcinogens MUST be coming from the nic. That contradicts everything that science has concluded so far about nic not being carcinogenic.
That said, I wouldn't dismiss this study out of hand. This is a new technology, a new methodology, a new way of looking at things. There could be several explanations. Perhaps the technology is not mature enough to be reliable yet. Perhaps there were methodology flaws, like the vaping gear being run at temps of 400C as has happened before. Perhaps DNA damage potentially causing cancer doesn't translate into (this type of) DNA damage actually causing cancer. Perhaps the results need further analysis. Perhaps they are picking up something that science hasn't been able to pick up before. It would need other labs to repeat the experiment, and other scientists to peer review the methodology and findings.
There are some things that trouble me, though. For starters, there is no test data. They say that one e-juice had nic in. But at what ratio? 3mg? 18mg? 50mg? What flavourings were used? What temps were run? They make a big deal of equating 20 vaping puffs to one cigarette. But I can't see how that matters. From the graph I posted above, all four appear to have been tested at 20, 60 and 100 puffs. So what is the relevance of 20 puffs = 1 cig if all four were tested on a puff-for-puff basis? What is the significance of carcinogens increasing the more puffs you take? That is self-evident, no?
That doesn't mean that the test results are invalid or that there is something fishy afoot. But in science, as in all things, we need the whole truth and not a summary that omits key information. I get that they can't provide all the data in a media article that is a dumbed-down summary intended for the lay person. But that data needs to be made available to Dr Farsalinos and others that they can analyse it and understand how these results were reached.