Smoking has been one of humanity’s unhealthy fixations for at least 5000 years; since South American shamen inhaled the smoke from smouldering leaves of the tobacco plant burnt in huge piles, to bring them closer to the spirit world. Arriving in the ‘new world’ in 1492, Columbus was offered ‘certain dried leaves’, which he describes in his journal as ‘gaving off a distinct fragrance’ – he didn’t like it, but the Portuguese that arrived soon after couldn’t get enough of the stuff. The tobacco market was born.
It was cultivated it in Brazil, and Sir Francis Drake brought the pipe back to England, where he gave it to Sir Walter Raleigh. Walter gave it to Queen Elizabeth I and by the turn of the 1600s, Sir Francis Bacon was writing that tobacco’s use was rapidly increasing and that it is a ‘custom hard to quit’. The real smoking revolution occurs with the co-invention of the cigarette and the match in the mid 19th centaury; making smoking accessible and convenient – the rest is history we’re all more familiar with.
Up until recently the cigarette reigned king, at least until the invention of the Electronic cigarette (aka E-cig, technofogger, futurefag, vaporiser, atomiser etc); a product that has become so popular among smokers in the last decade that a new language and culture has developed around it.
The first e-cig was invented in the 1960s by Herbert A. Gilbert, but it never caught on in a decade when approximately ¾ of men and ½ of women were happy smoking ‘analogue cigarettes’, not realising it was slowly killing them. Smokers had to wait another 40 years for the commercialisation of electronic cigarettes in the form of the “Ruyan Ruyan V8”, developed by the Chinese pharmaceuticals company Golden Dragon. Since then, products from over other 100 e-cig companies have flooded the UK market, fighting for a slice of the global market worth more than $15 billion.
Now, as a failed ex-smoker of 8 (or maybe 9) years, these new gadgets appeal to me for a number of reasons. Besides the fact that I can smoke inside as I write this (which I could anyways, if I really wanted), they’re relatively cheap, satisfying to smoke, and supposedly healthy. Apparently, smoking Brits seem to agree, with an increase of 18% according to a 2014 YouGov poll. E-cigs, however, are largely unregulated and medical associations have remarkably conflicting views on their potential risks.
The BMA (British Medical Associaton) worries about increasing use amongst young people and the risks of passive vaping, seeking to ban e-cigarettes in public (similar to with cigarettes) and regulate them under the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) claims that use among teenagers is less than 1% and that the risks of passive smoking are negligible; declaring e-cigs as the most effective way for smokers to quit, overtaking other nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) such as patches, nicotine gum and inhalers by 60% in 2014.
But are they safe? In the absence of long-term clinical trials, all we can do is look at the ingredients list and test what comes out the back. E-cigs vaporise a viscous mixture of propylene glycol (a common food additive you might find in cupcakes to keep them moist), Glycerol (also in food as a sweetener and preservative), a flavouring, and of course the ridiculously addictive tobacco derivative nicotine. All these ingredients are safe to eat (except nicotine, that’ll kill you if you eat more than a gram) but nobody really knows what breathing them in all day will do to your lungs. The actual nicotine concentration can vary greatly between different brands, and without regulation: is not standardized.
Animal studies have shown e-cig vapours contain diethylene glycol (responsible for mass poisonings of Nigerian children from exposure to counterfeit medication in 2009) along with carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitroamines and other impurities associated with nicotine extraction. Heavy metal nanoparticles, such as tin, chromium and nickel, have also been found to flake off the electronic components of the heating element and travel deep into the lungs.
It isn’t easy to compare these findings with the hundred or so carcinogens that make traditional smoking the largest preventable cause of premature mortality in the UK. With Big Tobacco companies fighting to buy-up E-cigarette manufacturers, and the tobacco lobby vying with government regulatory agencies, it is hard to say whether e-cigs are all they’re cracked up to be. However, with their use increasing at unprecedented levels, its likely to become more and more popular; for better or worse.