Can electronic cigarettes result in passive smoking for bystanders?

Despite the success of e-cigarettes for leisure enjoyment and as a smoking cessation aid

controversy over exactly how safe they are continues. The latest fear about e-cigarettes and their unrestricted use in public is that the nicotine vapour used to replace cigarette smoke in e-cigarettes might in itself result in a form of passive smoking for anyone close enough to inhale the vapour, including potentially on public transport and enclosed spaces like the Tube.

The term coined for people who use electronic cigarettes (to give them their full name) is “vapers”, so passive inhalation of nicotine vapour might be termed passive vaping. Ray Story is head of the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, Atlanta, Georgia in the USA and says that no harm is likely to come to anyone who is in close proximity to a vaper. Story has a company in the US which sells e-cigarettes so may not be entirely impartial, but electronic cigarettes are know to have lower levels of potentially carcinogenic emissions such as carbon monoxide compared with tobacco products; and although there is currently debate as to whether the nicotine levels in e-cigarettes are as moderate as the marketing blurb suggests, many smokers have found they quit using e-cigs after a lifetime of smoking harmful tobacco and not being able to wean themselves off it. Mr Story is one of many who feel e-cigarettes are the future for smokers trying to quit tobacco and they should be widely available and unrestricted.

“The worst thing we can do is take an individual who’s made a conscious choice to utilise a product that is less harmful, and then put him back in those smoking areas where for sure he is going to be subject to second- and third-hand smoke.”

Mr Story rebuffs any concerns over “passive vaping”:

“Some of the cologne would probably be far more repulsive than a couple of people vaping.”

Governments across the world are moving to regulate electronic cigarettes, including the European Commission, which is currently staging a review of the EU Tobacco Products Directive which could see the amount of nicotine in e-cigs restricted to just 4mg, which many smokers say would not be sufficient to help a heavy smoker overcome nicotine cravings and quit. In Italy, selling e-cigarettes has been restricted to those over the age of 18 until October this year, to allow time for a review of the accuracy of advertised nicotine levels in e-cigarettes.

Scientists are also joining the debate about the safety of electronic cigarettes and Tobias Schripp is one of the few researchers to have studied electronic cigarettes in any depth since they came to market in 2004. He points out that the vapour used to deliver the nicotine in e-cigarettes comprises chemicals like propylene glycol, which has both industrial and cosmetic uses and which may cause an allergic reaction in some individuals.

Propylene glycol is one of the constituents in products like baby wipes, however, and Schripp concedes that, unlike tobacco products, electronic cigarettes do not contain harmful chemicals such as the gas formaldehyde, which has been linked to increased risk of cancer.

Electronic cigarettes do not give of the same toxic emissions as tobacco smoke and there is no tar by-product to coat the linings of the lungs and other organs of the body, which is one of the main causes of cardiac and arterial disease, leading to heart attacks and strokes in smokers and even passive smokers regularly subjected to cigarette smoke in the home or at work.

Harmful by-products of tobacco also result in DNA changes to cells in the body, which leads to cancer of the lungs and increased risks for breast and prostate cancers.

In the 10 years that e-cigarettes have been in use, not one death linked to them has been reported; unlike the 6 million people who die annually from smoking-related disease and the 600,000 who die from passive smoking-related disease every year, according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Many may say it is far too early in the history of electronic cigarettes to draw any conclusions as to their safety, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is just one of the organisations calling for more research.

However, the reaction of the tobacco industry to the rise in popularity has been seen by some anti-smoking lobbyists as a key factor in the current backlash against e-cigarettes.

Electronic cigarettes are also much cheaper than tobacco products and whereas a leading brand of 20 cigarettes can now cost anything between £7.50 and £9 in the UK, nicotine refills cost around £5 and can supply up to the equivalent of 40 cigarettes, depending on the strength of an individual’s “puff”.

The nicotine vapour is also more targeted and while some vapour may disperse into the atmosphere as droplets containing small amounts of chemicals, the known effect is not comparable to the effects of tobacco smoke being widely dispersed into the atmosphere and the toxic effects of tar and emissions like carbon monoxide this can result in.

However, until e-cigarettes have been thoroughly scrutinised by the scientific community, researchers are cautious in their approach to their increasing popularity.

Smokers meanwhile continue to switch to using electronic cigarettes and in doing so many manage to quit lifelong smoking habits which previously they were unable to give up.