The era of conventional smoking may be coming to an end as smokers are making a dramatic shift towards e-cigarettes. But just how safe are e-cigarettes?
From all indications, electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are thought to be safer than traditional cigarettes. Nevertheless, if you completely stayed away from both of these products, you’d probably be the healthiest version of yourself.
What are e-cigarettes? They are battery-powered devices that heat e-liquids to vaporize them for vaping (inhalation). The vapor from e-cigars may contain flavorings, cannabidiol (CBD), nicotine, and other substances.
Different types of vapes characterize the skyrocketing e-cigarettes market. You can choose the flavor that appeals to you, but be sure that you’re not playing with fire.
The comparative safety levels between traditional cigarettes and vapes have been a heated topic that is being debated among researchers and health professionals.
For example, according to the United States’ Center for Disease Control (CDC), e-cigarettes aren’t safe for many classes of people such as pregnant women, children, and some adults.
Global Trend: E-Cigarettes vs. Traditional Cigarettes
As noted earlier, the number of traditional smokers keeps declining while the number of vapers is soaring. This observation has been confirmed by reports from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Unfortunately, our society is still far from being smoke-free. Even though there’s a general decline, a great number of smokers still stick to their habit. Thus, smoking continues to pose challenges to public health.
In 2015 alone, statistics showed that at least 1 billion people smoked tobacco substances world-wide. This means that smoking still leads to the causes of premature deaths in our world today.
When it comes to the consumption of e-cigarettes, the movement is unstoppable — vapers are going all out to enjoy their electronic cigarettes. Their explanation is that vaping is safe.
Let’s look at the statistics.
According to the CDC of the US, over 6 million adults were using electronic cigarettes as of 2017. During that same year, the usage of conventional cigarettes fell drastically to a record low.
In 2017, a staggering 6% of UK citizens used e-cigarettes. Most of these customers had at least a history of smoking, or are still smoking.
In fact, in the same 2017, more than 50% of vapers were known to be ex-smokers. Only a handful of vapers have no history of smoking.
How Safe Are E-cigarettes?
While smokers hold their pipes, they still wonder if e-cigarettes are safe. It’s certainly not a new discovery to say that smoking is associated with high risks of lung damage.
On the other hand, vaping is not 100% harmless, but it’s relatively safe.
Studies have shown that, just by quitting conventional cigarettes for e-hookahs, smokers can significantly lower their risks of getting cancer. This is because e-cigarettes reduce your exposure to over 70 carcinogenic substances that are contained in tobacco smoke.
The cancer potency of electronic cigarettes is far less than that of smoked tobacco. Raw smoking of tobacco is also related to decreased cardiovascular health. In fact, heart diseases kill more smokers than cancer does.
According to some British researchers, smoking just one pack of traditional cigarette a day, increases your risks of getting heart diseases. In essence, this means there’s no such thing as “safe level of smoking”, they noted.
The reason is that smoke from traditional cigars contains fine particles that eventually make their way to the bloodstream. This may lead to inflammation, thereby harming the heart and the circulatory system as a whole.
Unfortunately, some researchers hypothesize that the above effects of traditional cigarettes may apply to vaping as well.
This suggestion made sense when in a US survey, 700 thousand participants linked vaping to cardiovascular disorders. This means if you vape almost every day, your probability of having a heart attack is significantly greater than that of occasional vapers.
Other Health Risks of Electronic Cigarettes
The following are more concerns about the dangers of vaping.
- Nicotine is very addictive. Though vape products are supposed to be safer than the nicotine-packed conventional cigarettes, some manufacturers still add nicotine in their vaping products.
- Aside from the risks of addiction, nicotine is injurious to the brains of teenagers.
- Teenage vapers may eventually start smoking cigarettes
- Explosions and burns sometimes occur when charging defective batteries of electronic cigarettes
- Vaping isn’t healthy for the fetus of a pregnant woman.
The Benefits of Electronic Cigarettes
The excitement and sheer degree of satisfaction from vaping are unimaginable. To cloud chasers, flavorists, and hobbyists, vaping is worth it.
But even if we ignore the enjoyment aspect of electronic cigarettes, there are still some good things to say about vaping.
Basically, the statistics have clearly shown that vaping has helped a lot of heavy smokers to quit.
Some authors posit that manufacturers purposefully made electronic cigarettes to serve as much safer alternative products to traditional cigarettes.
If more heavy smokers quit traditional cigarettes for shisha or e-hookah, then maybe our public health system be under less strain.
How Safe Are E-Cigarettes; The Bottom Line
The conventional cigarettes vs electronic cigarettes debate is still ongoing. While it’s hard to assess the situation, so far it looks like vaping is a lot safer than smoking traditional cigarettes.
