Tuesday 30 January 2018

Vaping Not Safe But Safer

When i was a smoker i would only smoke low tar cigarettes as in my mind they were less harmful than normal cigarettes although i actually knew they were just as bad.
When i switched to vaping around five years ago i knew that although a lot less harmful than traditional cigarettes, i was still inhaling nicotine so they were not 'safe' despite the advertisements telling everyone that they were.  
No surprise then that a study by New York University School of Medicine has found that the nicotine in e-cigarettes may damage human DNA and lead to cancer.
'It's certainly concerning, and certainly gives pause if one were to say e-cigarettes were safe and could be used by all people without consequences' said Dr Roy Herbst, chair of the American Association for Cancer Research's Tobacco and Cancer sub-committee.
The researchers say that more work is needed, however, because research in animals can produce very different results in humans but that hasn't stopped the Royal College of Physicians stating that public health policy should encourage tobacco users to switch to a substitute nicotine product, such as vaping.
The reason the Royal College of Physicians are keen to see smokers switch to e-cigarettes is because their figures show that vaping is over 95% less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The only way to be safe is to not smoke or vape at all and the New York University School report may be alarming but if you vape your chances of developing cancer from it is at least 95% less than when you were puffing away on tobacco cigarettes.
It isn't perfect and doing anything that increases your chances of getting cancer by 5% is a worry but the study is set against someone who doesn't smoke and starts at a baseline of nil so it is worth remembering that by swapping to e-cigarettes you improve your chances of not getting cancer by 95% and that's immense.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Falling on a bruise said...

I'm sure there are millions of people alive today who wouldn't be if it wasn't for doctors, hospitals and medicines who would beg to differ.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.