Holy shit, that’s what I get for using a heuristic. Unless the results were faked this seems highly concerning. Relevant quite from the study:
Across all devices, virgin e-liquids exhibited relatively low concentrations of the primary elements observed in the heating coils, including Cr (3 to 20 μg/kg) and Fe (148 to 1090 μg/kg) (Table S2). Across ELF Bar and Flum Pebble virgin e-liquids, Ni was similarly low to Cr and Fe (14 to 29 μg/kg; Table S2). Unexpectedly, elements that are not present in heating coils (Table S1), including Pb, Cu, Zn, and Sb, were observed at excessive concentrations in Esco Bar device virgin e-liquids, with the exception of Ni which was elevated in virgin e-liquids relative to ELF Bar and Flum Pebble virgin e-liquids and present in coils (Figure 1). Esco Bar Flavored and Clear virgin e-liquids showed extremely high concentrations of Pb (64,000 to 127,000 μg/kg), Ni (13,000 to 38,400 μg/kg), Cu (344,000 to 533,000 μg/kg), and Zn (240,000 to 376,000 μg/kg) (Table S2). For context, concentrations of Pb, Ni, Cu, and Zn were universally and comparatively low in all other virgin e-liquids from Elf Bar or Flum Pebble devices, at ≤15, ≤29, ≤24, and ≤331 μg/kg, respectively, with the exception of Zn in the ELF Bar Flavored virgin e-liquid at 4420 μg/kg (Table S2).
A vape with a borderline dangerous amount of lead in the liquid might still be superior to cigarettes from a health standpoint, but why risk it when you can just use a regular non disposable one with coils and juice from reputable brands?
Yeah seems like it, the gold standard coil alloy is kanthal and, don’t quite me on this, but I think it’s been basically the only one considered acceptable for “roll your own” coils since like forever, so almost certainly what you were using. And most DIYers used to use nic freebase only (not sure if that’s still the case), the paper implicates the hcl salt nic as possibly making the metal leeching thing more efficient:
Nicotine salts introduce organic acids (5) in e-liquids, which may facilitate metal dissolution in e-liquids through ligand–metal interactions.
Anyway, the metal of concern in kanthal is chromium which can be non-toxic depending on the chemical form. The paper stated they didn’t detect any toxic version of chromium in the vapor, although they speculate it might be possible for this to undergo a further chemical change in the lungs:
Nontoxic Cr(III) was the only oxidation state of Cr observed in aerosols
But they also detected metals that didn’t come from the coils! Like Escobar brand apparently has a coil sheath that is 40% lead. Like what the actual fuck were they thinking with that design decision? And sure enough the juice had lead in it before it was even vaped. Also they found antimony and stated they didn’t know where it came from, presumably it would be something the juice came into contact with before the device was put together.
Yeah, that’s the thing. This dogshit headline says “more toxic than cigarettes” but that’s simply not what the study looked at, it looked at specifically heavy metal exposures, which are not the primary things that make smoking cigarettes bad for you.
Holy shit, that’s what I get for using a heuristic. Unless the results were faked this seems highly concerning. Relevant quite from the study:
I’m still a bit like ok, so how does it compares to cigarettes? I know a lot of people who quit cigarettes using vapes
A vape with a borderline dangerous amount of lead in the liquid might still be superior to cigarettes from a health standpoint, but why risk it when you can just use a regular non disposable one with coils and juice from reputable brands?
Agree , i used my own when I vaped to quit tobacco. Thing was it mentioned the coils , which I assume is cheaper stuff in disposable vapes.
Yeah seems like it, the gold standard coil alloy is kanthal and, don’t quite me on this, but I think it’s been basically the only one considered acceptable for “roll your own” coils since like forever, so almost certainly what you were using. And most DIYers used to use nic freebase only (not sure if that’s still the case), the paper implicates the hcl salt nic as possibly making the metal leeching thing more efficient:
Anyway, the metal of concern in kanthal is chromium which can be non-toxic depending on the chemical form. The paper stated they didn’t detect any toxic version of chromium in the vapor, although they speculate it might be possible for this to undergo a further chemical change in the lungs:
But they also detected metals that didn’t come from the coils! Like Escobar brand apparently has a coil sheath that is 40% lead. Like what the actual fuck were they thinking with that design decision? And sure enough the juice had lead in it before it was even vaped. Also they found antimony and stated they didn’t know where it came from, presumably it would be something the juice came into contact with before the device was put together.
Yeah, that’s the thing. This dogshit headline says “more toxic than cigarettes” but that’s simply not what the study looked at, it looked at specifically heavy metal exposures, which are not the primary things that make smoking cigarettes bad for you.