Teenagers who use electronic cigarettes are exposed to cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco even when the e-cigarettes don’t contain nicotine, according to a new study.
Researchers at University of California San Francisco analyzed urine and saliva from 67 teens who used e-cigarettes and found they had been exposed to some of the same chemicals in tobacco that cause cancer.
Under-18s are almost three times more likely to use e-cigarettes than adults, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The so-called ‘vaping’ devices, which vaporize a liquid laced with nicotine and other flavors, have been marketed as a safer alternative to smoking – but lead author Mark Rubinstein says these results point to an increase in cancer risk from vaping.
Teenagers who use electronic cigarettes are exposed to cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco even when the e-cigarettes don’t contain nicotine, according to a study by the University of California San Francisco (stock image)
‘Teenagers need to be warned that the vapor produced by e-cigarettes is not harmless water vapor, but actually contains some of the same toxic chemicals found in smoke from traditional cigarettes,’ Dr Rubinstein, MD, a professor of pediatrics at UCSF, said.
‘Teenagers should be inhaling air, not products with toxins in them.’
The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, compared using and saliva samples from three different groups: 67 teens who used e-cigarettes, 17 teens who used e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco cigarettes and 20 teens from a control group who did not use cigarettes.
The group that used e-cigarettes was found to have levels of toxic organic compounds that were three times higher than the control group.
The group that used both e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes had levels that were six times higher.
Dr Rubinstein noted that some of the toxic chemicals were found in the bodies of teens who used flavored e-cigarettes without nicotine.
When asked whether they used liquid with nicotine, 31 percent of participants said ‘always’, 39 percent said ‘sometimes’, 15 percent said ‘unsure’ and 15 percent said ‘never’.
More than half of the e-cigarette participants indicated using fruit- or candy-flavored products, which left significant amounts of the compound acrylonitrile, which is used widely in the manufacturing of plastics, adhesives and synthetic rubber.
This is the first-known study to look at the presence of potentially cancer-causing compounds in adolescents e-cigarette users.
The compounds examined in the study include acrylonitrile, acrolein, propylene oxide, acrylamide and crotonaldehyde, all of which have been associated with increased cancer-risk in previous studies.
Additionally, Dr Rubinstein said the chemicals used to keep e-cigarette solutions in their liquid form, propylene glycol and glycerin, are safe at room temperature but toxic when heated to the temperatures required for vaporization.
In 2016, more than two million US middle and high school students used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, including 4.3 percent of middle school students and 11.3 percent of high school students, compared with 3.2 percent of US adults.
The same CDC report found that only 2.2 percent of middle-schoolers and eight percent of high-schoolers had smoked traditional cigarettes in the past 30 days.
When asked what was in their e-cigarette, 66 percent of teens said ‘just flavoring’, 13.7 percent said they didn’t know, 13.2 percent said nicotine, 5.8 percent said marijuana, according to a survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
After the 2016 CDC report was released, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics Dr Benard Deyer called the increasing rates of e-cigarette use among youths a ‘major public health concern’.
‘E-cigarettes have the potential to addict the next generation,’ he said.