Do you want to quit smoking? It is likely that the electronic cigarette will not help you. This is the thesis accompanying an extensive report commissioned by the Department of Health of the Australian Government and conducted by the National Center for Epidemiology and Public Health of the country, which indeed warns about the health risks of e-cigs and proposes to governments even to ban their sale all over the world.
This is the largest analysis of the scientific literature produced so far on the subject and the conclusions are quite clear: the evidence that electronic cigarettes somehow serve to quit smoking is limited or nil, while non-smokers who try for the first time to “vape” they would even be three times more likely to start smoking traditional cigarettes in the future.
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But that’s not all: the report documents significant impacts in prolonged use, from poisoning to burns and injuries to seizures triggered by inhaling toxic substances. “The main risks are for young people under the age of 24 – he explains Emily BanksProfessor of Epidemiology and Public Health atAustralian National University who coordinated the work -. For them, we found more likely to suffer from poisoning, burns and above all to develop addiction “.
Despite some criticisms for the results of the study, which leave no appeal to a market that today is worth about 22 billion dollars, the work of the Australian researchers is part of a broad line of analysis that in the last period are strongly questioning the tobacco smoking cessation potential represented by e-cigarettes. It is the WHO itself that maintains that “there is no robust scientific evidence in this sense”.
At the same time, clear correlations are emerging from most of the international reviews on the subject with chronic lung diseases, asthma, hypertension and stiffness of blood vessels.
How an e-cig is made and why it can become dangerous
Let’s take a step back. Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigs, were born 20 years ago from the mind of Hon Lik, a brilliant pharmacist from Beijing. They are nothing more than tubes filled with flavored liquids, which are heated with an electric resistance and vaporized and then end up in the user’s lungs in the form of an aerosol. There is no combustion, but there is still a heating.
Lik’s original idea was to offer smokers a new way out of the tunnel of nicotine addiction. Over the years, in fact, e-cigs have become an effective alternative in case of failure of traditional cessation protocols and are a tool used not infrequently even in the approximately 300 anti-smoking centers of our country.
But what is emerging, thanks to increasingly robust epidemiological data and independent analyzes from the world‘s major research centers, is that the repercussions on health could be quite comparable to those triggered by the good old cigarette.
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Tobacco, in fact, gives way to the so-called e-liquid, a mix of water, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin and flavoring that give the most varied tastes. The fact is that the smoker takes with each puff a large amount of complex chemical compounds, which according to experts can cause even serious and long-term injuries, such as neurological and learning disorders, while for diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular system, so as with cancer, the impacts are not known to date.
The most recent toxicological analysis conducted on the smoke produced by the electronic cigarette has identified as many as 243 different chemical compounds, 38 of which are classified as dangerous or highly toxic, one prohibited by international standards and three permitted but present at poisoning levels. And then the reaction products, including acetaldehyde, acrolein, formaldehyde and propylene oxide, all possible or certain carcinogens according to Iarc. Here then is the analysis of the team of Australian epidemiologists, who conclude that at the moment “the safety for the use of e-cig has not yet been demonstrated”.
Big tobacco and “catchy” marketing on young people
You vape by inhaling a minimal amount of nicotine, the one needed by the body that has developed addiction over years of consuming traditional cigarettes. This eliminates most of the risks associated with smoking and does not even get your hands dirty. These are the words with which the largest e-cig manufacturers have conquered the markets of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Russia, the largest consumers. It matters little that these brands are called British American Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris International, always theirs.
“What worries us most is the marketing of these new products which is aimed mainly at young people and presents the electronic cigarette as a valid and healthier alternative to the traditional one – observes the epidemiologist – and wins them over with captivating chemical tastes”. We are creating a new generation of smokers 2.0 – the Australian researchers write – equally addicted to nicotine and more likely to start smoking traditional cigarettes.
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The numbers of smoking and the opinion of the EU
There are more than one billion smokers in the world, 80% of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. Result? Over 8 million victims of smoking every year according to WHO. According to the most accredited estimates, consumers of electronic cigarettes are instead between 50 and 100 million, very young and mainly located in industrialized countries.
A clearly visible trend also in Italy, where in the last four years the number of students who smoke them has gone from 2.9% to 8.2% of the total and 76% of under-15s manage to find them on the market, despite being banned under 18 years old. Banks and colleagues come to define the consumption of e-cigs among the under-18s, even more widespread in Australia and the United States, as a real “public health crisis”.
In April 2021, the Scientific Committee of the European Commission also took to the field to assess the emerging health risks. The conclusions speak of “irritative damage to the respiratory tract and cardiovascular system” as well as “moderate risks of carcinogenicity”. What to do then? “The goal of our report was to provide scientific evidence for policy makers – concludes Banks -. Based on this increasingly solid evidence, we encourage them to make appropriate decisions.”