For a while (and still going strong in the US), it seemed to be a medical fact in the making that vaping caused the infamous popcorn lungs. Only, it didn’t.
The culprit actually was a chemical called diacetyl — the very thing that gives popcorn its buttery taste, and which did the same to some vapes — but which is actually not a generic compound in all vapes. In Europe, example given, the use of diacetyl is illegal in vapes. (Not in the US if I am not mistaken.)
But still, some alarming medical conditions are systematically in vaping patients, such as:[1]
- spontaneous collapsed lungs — vaping is associated to bursting blisters on the lungs, which then cause holes through which oxygen escapes so that the lung collapses;
- lipoid pneumonia — pneumonia caused by inhaling oily substances in e-liquid.
But at this very moment, there is no clue as to whether (generic) vaping actually does cause cancer.
What is a fact though, is that through vaping a number of harmful chemicals — and maybe especially large doses of nicotine — are inhaled, and those can (and will) damage cells. And once cells get damaged, their specific multiplication processes could go off rails, and lead to cancer in the end.
It is still too early for Science to deduce anything conclusive in this context, but one thing is clear: the “could” in the pervious sentence is a definite “can (and will)” in the context of tobacco cigarettes.
So vaping still seems to be the smarter choice compared to tobacco smoking, but keep in mind that no definite conclusions have been made in the cancer discussion.
One single bad case of sunburn as a child can reoccur as skin cancer 40 years later, so you might be able to imagine what insistent vaping could do on the inside if enough elbow room is given —
The choice is yours.
SOURCES: A case of the intrapulmonary spread of recurrent respiratory papillomatosis with malignant transformation, American Journal of Medical Sciences 350 (2015), 55–57. (Attribution: NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International)
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