this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
484 points (98.4% liked)

World News

39102 readers
2175 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Vaping seems to be healthier than cigarette smoking from what I've read, and it makes sense. Burnt particulate matter is hell on your lungs.

But it should be used for smokers to break addiction. And recreational use needs to be heavily regulated until we can do long term studies that show it's relatively safe.

I'll explain as someone with professional chemistry experience. Vaping vaporizes water to deliver the nicotine -- or just to deliver flavored vapor without the nicotine. This process gives me two major concerns:

  1. It isn't pure water vapor, there's additives and oils even for juices with no nicotine. We don't know what breathing in the vaporized flavor additives does. And, we don't know if the process is generating enough heat to cause chemical reactions and degradation of the non water components. It's completely possible that carcinogenic or toxic compounds could come from this. This warrants a lot more study, and fortunately, it should be quite doable. Spectroscopy could tell us a lot.

  2. Remember how Flint had a lot of lead in their water? Heavy metals in water come from surface atoms on the metal leaching into the water. You can treat the water to either discourage this or cause it to precipitate out. Heat increases the frequency of leaching -- so vaporizing water with the coils is going to lead to heavy metal particles in the vapor. This is where we really don't have information. We can likely determine the quantity and type of metal atoms, but we can't determine what it's going to do to the lungs. A big safety concern with tiny particles is breathing them in, because nanoparticles and the like will also ravage your lungs when inhaled. Doesn't even matter what the solid particle is.

The latter concern is where we need long term research. We need to know if the heavy metal particles in the vapor are causing damage in the same way that nanoparticles do. And we need to know what prolonged exposure to those metal particles does. After 40 years of vaping, would enough metal have deposited in airways to cause health issues? It's very possible.

Is that to say stop right this second? No, but just be aware of the risks and don't go overboard. Heavy drinking is probably still worse for you than this, and smoking is definitely worse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Let's be clear: inhaling anything that isn't gaseous and/or meant to be in your lungs is inherently going to kill them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's not just glycols/oils for all of them at least I thought