Wildly Misleading Study Spun As Proof E-cigs Possess 10 Times the Carcinogens of Tobacco
by Klaus Kneale No Comments
November 27, 2014
A study from Japan was published this week that media are already calling the latest blow to an invention once heralded as less harmful than smoking. According to the researchers, electronic cigarettes tested for carcinogens proved to have 10 times the formaldehyde normally found in tobacco cigarettes. This has been spun as E-cigarettes contain up to 10 times the amount of cancer-causing agents as regular tobacco.
In reality, managing to get 10 times the carcinogens of tobacco cigarettes into anything remotely similar in scope would be a feat of chemical engineering. Despite decades of study, scientists are still working to identify all the crap found in tobacco smoke. Best estimates put the number of constituents somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000. Thus far, more than 4000 identified constituents have been deemed extremely harmful to one’s health.
For a moment, let’s assume that the researchers did find 10 times the formaldehyde in equivalent amounts of e-cig vapor as tobacco smoke (even though it only occurred in one brand). There’s still a few problems with the way this is getting spun — the first of which being that formaldehyde is not nearly the worst or only constituent in cigarette smoke which users should be worried about.
Even if there is a surplus of formaldehyde in e-cig vapor compared to tobacco smoke, there’s much higher amounts of Acetylene, Ammonia, Cyanide, Benzene, and much, much more to be worried about. Countless other studies have found levels for all these constituents (including formaldehyde) in most e-cig vapor occur at levels 10, 100, or 1000 times below that of cigarette smoke. Many constituents known to occur in tobacco smoke haven’t even been found in electronic cigarette vapor.
Still, it seems the researchers found only a single e-cig brand that (inconsistently) produced a high level of formaldehyde. At this point, there are so many brands and companies that a single (probably cut-rate piece of crap) hardly represents the chemical architecture of the industry at large. “In one brand of e-cigarette the team found more than 10 times the level of carcinogens contained in one regular cigarette,” said researcher Naoki Kunugita, adding that the amount of formaldehyde detected varied through the course of analysis. Sounds to me like they chose to cherry pick only the information that made the point they were looking for.
Again, even assuming e-cig vapor contains 100 times the formaldehyde of tobacco smoke, their use would still be far, far less harmful than smoking.
Of course, this news will likely travel the media circuit pretty fast. However, there is much more evidence that e-cig vapor isn’t nearly the danger some misleading studies would have us believe.
source
by Klaus Kneale No Comments
November 27, 2014
In reality, managing to get 10 times the carcinogens of tobacco cigarettes into anything remotely similar in scope would be a feat of chemical engineering. Despite decades of study, scientists are still working to identify all the crap found in tobacco smoke. Best estimates put the number of constituents somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000. Thus far, more than 4000 identified constituents have been deemed extremely harmful to one’s health.
For a moment, let’s assume that the researchers did find 10 times the formaldehyde in equivalent amounts of e-cig vapor as tobacco smoke (even though it only occurred in one brand). There’s still a few problems with the way this is getting spun — the first of which being that formaldehyde is not nearly the worst or only constituent in cigarette smoke which users should be worried about.
Still, it seems the researchers found only a single e-cig brand that (inconsistently) produced a high level of formaldehyde. At this point, there are so many brands and companies that a single (probably cut-rate piece of crap) hardly represents the chemical architecture of the industry at large. “In one brand of e-cigarette the team found more than 10 times the level of carcinogens contained in one regular cigarette,” said researcher Naoki Kunugita, adding that the amount of formaldehyde detected varied through the course of analysis. Sounds to me like they chose to cherry pick only the information that made the point they were looking for.
Again, even assuming e-cig vapor contains 100 times the formaldehyde of tobacco smoke, their use would still be far, far less harmful than smoking.
Of course, this news will likely travel the media circuit pretty fast. However, there is much more evidence that e-cig vapor isn’t nearly the danger some misleading studies would have us believe.
source
in the comments.
