you see them at work, on the bus, i've evenseen them on airplanes. e-cigs are everywhere, are they really that awesome? e-cigarettes are everywhere and new studieson vaping come out all the time. if somehow you're unfamiliar, vapes involve three pieces,a battery, container of liquid, and a heating element. this simple device can be used todeliver everything from tobacco or thc to flavored mists and caffeine. the vapor marketin the u.s. hit an estimated 2.5 billion dollars -- 60 percent of which was just for customizablemods and juices. over the last five years, aggressive marketing,and limiting of the cigarette market has caused the market to explode. that being said, thereare precious few regulations or studies exploring
what vaping is doing to the inside of users,especially over the long term; and no studies on long-term exposure in living animals. theamerican heart association weighed in last may -- and it wasn't awesome for fans of vaping-- you can check out laci's video for some background on that, but since then -- morehas come to light. the latest study to rock the vaping worldcomes out of johns hopkins - researchers exposed mice to vapor from e-cigs. to do so, theyused a modified smoking machine which inhaled for 2 seconds once every 10 seconds. otherstudies have found smokers showed a biomarker called cotinine; so they exposed the miceto a concentration of nicotine that would produce similar nicotine biomarkers to a heavysmoker. they even measured the entirety of
the vapor and mixed it with filtered air beforeexposing the mice for 1.5 hours a day total over two weeks. they also exposed some miceto just regular air. they found there are over 700 billion particulatefree radials per puff of a vape. normally, free radicals are a product of heating, sothese are actual particles that will enter the lungs and quote "could be potentiallytoxic to cells." though more research is needed to determine that toxicity. aside from that,they exposed the mice to the bacteria which cause pneumonia, or the influenza virus -- ourlittle friend the flu. as you've probably guessed, this study doesn'tgo well for vapes, the lead researcher says the lungs are definitely affected by the chemicalsin liquid nicotine e-cigs. the mice who were
vaping had lung inflammation and protein damage;and when exposed to infection their defenses were significantly reduced. the mice wereunable to clear bacteria from their lungs, and those with the flu experienced weightloss and some died! it's important to point out, this is one typeof vape, there are many iterations and mods available which might change the results -- andthey each require their own scientific scrutiny. studies have conclusively shown, however,that vapor does contain free radicals, formaldehyde, and other carcinogens. on average, e-cigscontain only 1-percent the number of chemicals of an average cigarette, but even that surprisedthe researchers since manufacturers claim otherwise.
in the end, the scientific community and theregulatory community are still trying to figure this crap out. queen mary university of londonpublished a piece in addiction which said regulating e-cigs the same way as tobaccoisn't necessary because of their vast differences. at the same time, both the american heartassociation and food and drug administration encourage cigarette-like regulations! frankly,the medical community is very clear; in comparison to smoking cigarettes, vaping is better, butthat doesn't mean it gets a gold star. looks like science has some work to do. what do you think? we followed up on thisbecause nexy_dre and saurini wanted to know more! if you have anything you want to knowabout tell us!