We’ve seen everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Leonardo DiCaprio blowing out clouds of smoke – or rather, vapour – claiming that it is healthier than smoking. And many ‘vapers’ unashamedly use their devices indoors, a punishable offence for traditional cigarettes, of course.
The truth, however, is that no-one really knows whether vaping IS healthier than traditional smoking. Professor Pamela Naidoo, CEO of The Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa (HSFSA), says the long-term effects of vaping are simply unknown.
This explains why in some countries vaping is banned outright, while in others it’s accepted and even promoted as a method to quit smoking. Since vaping has been around for less than a decade, the long-term consequences are yet to be seen. It could turn out to be healthier than smoking, but it could also turn out to be worse.
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Get your head out of the clouds
According to Naidoo, the HSFSA has taken up the anti-vaping cause. ‘What the evidence from a number of short-term studies has shown is that vaping is very far from risk-free. Smokers who want to stop have healthier alternatives available to them,’ she says.
Exhaled aerosol clouds contain cancer-causing chemicals such as aldehydes that are potentially dangerous to everyone around vapers, she explains. Vaping is also largely funded by big tobacco, an industry built on exploiting the addictiveness of nicotine, putting people’s health at high risk and creating one of the major causes of disease and death in the world.
What we do know about vaping
Vape clouds are not water vapour: Vape juices contain a variety of chemicals that form compounds when exposed to heat and turn into an aerosol that is exhaled. It’s not water vapour.
Nicotine has health impacts: Apart from being highly addictive, nicotine also has physical impacts. It is toxic at high levels and at nontoxic levels, nicotine is known to increase blood pressure and restrict blood flow throughout the body. Nicotine has been linked to hair loss; gum disease; dry, saggy, wrinkly skin; erectile dysfunction; hypertension and vascular damage.
Vaping increases the risks of halitosis and gum disease: Vape juices contain propylene glycol, which, along with nicotine, reduces saliva. We need healthy levels of saliva to wash away bacteria in the mouth. This leaves vapers vulnerable to having bad breath and increasing the risks of gingivitis and periodontitis.
Vaping decreases the expression of genes related to immune function: Vaping affects 358 genes that play a part in fighting viruses and bacteria; smoking affects 53.
Vaping is likely to increase the risks of cancers: Vape juices contain a variety of solvents such as glycerine and propylene glycol, as well as metallic particles such as chromium, cadmium and lead. When heated, they form new, unknown compounds, likely to be cancer-causing aldehydes.
E-cigs do more harm than good
Research done by Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit of the Division of Pulmonology and Lung Institute at the University of Cape Town shows e-cigarettes have not been proven to be safe or effective in quitting smoking. ‘They contain nicotine, which is toxic and addictive, and tobacco companies are selling them. How can they be good?’ Van Zyl-Smit says.
‘The e-cigarette industry needs to be tightly regulated, and independent assessment of the harms needs to be made, or we risk replacing one evil with another. E-cigarettes may be less dangerous than tobacco, but given that tobacco kills 50% of its users, what would not be safer?’
Naidoo adds that the decline in teen smoking has sadly been reversed thanks to e-cigarettes and could be creating a generation of health problems not yet known to us. ‘It has become imperative to educate ourselves on the possible effects of vaping, not only to protect our health but that of future generations who are rapidly taking up vaping. Our health, and that of our children, is far too precious to gamble away in an experiment.’
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