Flavored e-cigarettes contain a chemical that irritates your airways
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Although e-cigarettes are supposed to be better for your health than tobacco cigarettes, it looks like flavored e-cigarettes can harm your airways.
According to a new study published in the Thorax journal, e-cigarettes users who smoke cherry-flavored vapors are inhaling a chemical called Benzaldehyde, which can irritate their airways.
After many campaigns of awareness against the harm tobacco can do to your health causing among many other problems, even lung cancer, many people tried to find healthier alternatives to traditional cigarettes. Quitting is not an easy task and although some use nicotine patches, other have decided to replace the traditional tobacco cigarette with the healthier e-cigarette. The main difference is the instead of inhaling tobacco smoke, you inhale some oily vapors with different flavors.
However, it seems that these vapors are not that healthier after all. According to what the scientists found, the oils contain large quantities of benzaldehyde, a chemical used for natural food flavorings.
The researchers have taken samples from e-cigarettes flavoured with tropical fruit, chocolate, coffee, mint, cherry and alcohol and have found that a great percentage of the vapors contained this substance. The substance has been previously reported as a hazard for the airways.
From 145 samples, the harmful chemical was found in 108. Therefore, the chances of your airways getting irritated are quite high. If you’re experiencing any symptoms such as cough, you might consider that your flavored e-cigarette is to blame for that.
However, the exposure limit to this chemical is of about 8 hours. Therefore, it would take you several years of vaping to reach this limit. Scientists believe e-cigarettes are still a lot healthier than traditional tobacco ones, which can expose you to more than 7,000 chemicals, 6 of which are known to be carcinogens.
On the other hand, it is advisable that authorities in charge take a better look at the contents of e-cigarettes and introduce regulations to make sure consumers know what they are inhaling. Although the benzaldehyde is not harmful to your skin or if it is ingested, it can be harmful if inhaled or it can irritate your eyes. Therefore, if you experience any irritation at eye or airway level while using or after you have used a flavored e-cigarette, you should be extra careful in the future.
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