Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hapless 3002 days ago
The nichrome heating elements in vapes have been proven to leach considerable amounts of manganese and chromium into your vape fluid and vapor.

https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2017/study-toxic-me...

1 comments

It's almost always easy to spot deliberate cherry picking and dishonest statistics in order to come to an alarmist conclusion.

"For their study, the researchers selected five leading brands of so-called first generation e-cigarettes, which are referred to as cig-a-likes because they resemble traditional cigarettes. (Newer ones look like small cassette recorders with a mouthpiece. In the newer devices the liquid is added from a dispenser prior to use. In contrast, the liquid in first generation e-cigs is stored in the cartridge together with the coil, which increases the liquid’s exposure to the coil even in the absence of heating.) The five brands are sold across the United States in big-box retail stores, convenience stores and gas stations, as well as online. Three of the five brands constituted 71 percent of total market share in 2015. If a brand came in more than one flavor, the researchers chose one flavor for consistency’s sake."

Almost no one uses this piece of junk cig-a-likes. Try and find a person using one on the street, compared to people using proper high powered mods, which their "market share" statistic most certainly does not include.

"This study was funded by the Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health."

Shocking.

I have yet to read a negative study that does not contain obvious blatant lies.

71% of the market is "almost no one" ?

Who do you expect to investigate tobacco products, if not the institute of tobacco control at America's #1 medical college?

edit: also, if your "high power mod" still uses a nichrome heating element, you will have the same problems. Chemistry is chemistry.

> 71% of the market is "almost no one" ?

71% of the market of product sold in big-box retail stores, convenience stores and gas stations, as well as online. That market is perhaps 10% (that's being generous) of the overall ecig market, because those tiny things suck.

I'm less worried about metal leeching in higher end mods, the juice doesn't sit for months on end with significant surface area touching metal as the juice is typically vaped in << 24 hours, and the physical designs are quite different.

That said, there is still an element of unknown risk, both with the metals used, as well as the wicking materials, but it seems reasonable to expect high end products where they have better margins and more concern with reputation to put much more emphasis on safety and quality.

EDIT:

I think I will have to eat some crow, after doing some googling it seems there are in fact thorough real studies being performed on real world equipment:

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp2175/

I mostly just skimmed this article, figuring out whether these detected levels are beyond what is considered "safe" or how they compare to both regular cigarettes and background environmental exposure I suppose would be nice to know, but based on this article I am going to change my stance to believe that yes, in fact I am exposing myself to heavy metals even when using a high end mod. I think I'm going to do some more research later as I would expect this report would have gotten a fair amount of publicity in the enthusiast community, will be interesting to see how honest their reaction is to this.