Public Health England’s claim that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer than tobacco is outdated and misleading, according to scientists.
The government department stands by the claim but researchers said it’s based on old evidence and is no longer relevant.
E-cigarettes have changed ‘significantly’ since the studies on which the 95 per cent line is based, they said in an opinion piece, which did not offer its own estimate.
And increasing numbers of health dangers are being reported by doctors.
The US suffered a vaping illness crisis last year in which a newly-discovered lung condition affected more than 2,500 people and killed 55.
Experts still say that vaping is safer than smoking cigarettes but making it seem totally safe is attracting people who never smoked in the first place and getting them hooked on nicotine.
Public Health England maintains that vaping is ‘at least 95 per cent less harmful’ than smoking tobacco. This image was used in a post on its Public Health Matters blog in October 2019
‘It doesn’t make any sense for us to claim that we know that it’s 95 per cent safer than combustible cigarettes,’ said Dr Thomas Eissenberg, from Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the writers of the article.
‘We’ve been studying cigarettes for the last 60 to 70 years and so we have a huge database with which we can look at how many people die from that behavior.
‘We don’t have anything near that kind of history with electronic cigarettes.
‘What we do know is that they are delivering toxicants to the human lung and that over repeated use, in some cases, we see health effects from those toxicants that e-cigarette users are inhaling.
‘People are using the claim as a reason to either keep using e-cigarettes if they started some time ago, or if they’ve never used nicotine before, they hear 95 per cent safer than combustible cigarettes and they say, “Well, that’s safe enough for me” and so then they start using.’
Dr Eissenberg is a director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, and published the piece alongside five colleagues.
They did not do a scientific study of the dangers of e-cigarettes but looked at the evidence on which the 95 per cent safety claim was first made in 2013.
And since then, they said, the technology of the devices and the ingredients of the liquids have both changed, and more evidence has come to light of health dangers.
Public Health England, a department of the UK Government, has been claiming for almost five years that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent healthier than smoking. Scientists in the US now say the claim is outdated and no longer relevant because the devices have changed so much
The e-cigarettes or inhaling devices themselves are now up to 20 times more powerful than they were in 2013, the researchers said, meaning they produce more chemicals in a puff.
There are thousands of flavouring liquids being sold around the world and they contain chemicals for which the effects of inhaling them aren’t known.
And liquids may now contain higher concentrations of nicotine, which has its own health risks and is highly addictive.
‘In addition to using different materials and more numerous heating coils, many e-cigarettes today can attain power output that exceeds that of most over-the-counter 2013 models by 10 to 20 times,’ the researchers wrote.
‘Greater power increases the potential harms of e-cigarette use because more aerosol is produced that exposes users to increased levels of nicotine and other toxicants.’
Health dangers scientists have associated with e-cigarettes include those posed by nicotine and chemicals called aerosols.
Nicotine is known to be able to damage brain development, and aerosols, when inhaled, can cause physical damage to the lungs because of heavy metals like lead, volatile organic compounds, and cancer-causing agents.
Vaping has also been linked to damage to blood vessels and an increased risk of stroke or heart attack.
Public Health England repeated the 95 per cent safer claim as recently as October 2019 in a graphic posted on its Public Health Matters blog.
It has used the tagline since 2015 when it published an expert review of evidence and launched a campaign to encourage smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
In a press release after a later review, in 2018, Professor John Newton, director for health improvement at PHE said: ‘Our new review reinforces the finding that vaping is a fraction of the risk of smoking, at least 95 per cent less harmful, and of negligible risk to bystanders.’
The Royal College of Physicians, a UK-based organisation which represents 37,000 doctors around the world, also stands by the claim.
In a statement to MailOnline today it said: ‘The Royal College of Physicians has previously stated that while vaping may not be completely “safe”, the hazard to health arising from long-term use of e-cigarettes available today in the UK is unlikely to exceed 5 per cent of the harm from smoking tobacco.’
The dangers of e-cigarettes are now being seen in real-life patients, particularly in the US.
Last year a total of 2,561 people needed hospital treatment because of a newly-identified condition called vaping-associated pulmonary illness (VAPI).
People suffered breathlessness, fever, cough, vomiting, headaches, dizziness and chest pain because of their e-cigarettes and 55 people in 27 states died.
Officials say a chemical called vitamin E acetate, which is mainly used in cannabis vaping products, was to blame for most of the cases.
And a study published earlier this week showed that e-cigarette users have been reporting health problems caused by their habit online for at least 12 years.
Until now, the issues – which included asthma, sore throats and coughs and colds – may not have been blamed on vaping, a relatively new phenomenon.
Dr Eissenberg and his team’s editorial was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
MailOnline has contacted Public Health England for comment.