A study was recently carried out at the international VAPEXPO exhibition in Kiev to determine why vapers vape. Organisers asked the audience specific questions and the answers didn’t come as much of a surprise to us, but it’s worth noting considering a much bigger story was run in the Daily Mail stating that “E cigarettes can instantly damage lungs”.
The headline says it all at the Daily Mail and other news agencies ran with similar scaremongering headlines concerning the same study. It all centres around a study by Dr Andreas Lappas, of the Hellenic Cancer Society in Athens. Her team looked at 54 cigarette and e-cigarettes smokers aged 18 to 31 and measured their lung function after they smoked regular cigarettes and inhaled e-cigarettes.
Now, firstly it’s interesting how a study of 54 people can gain coverage in an internally respected news outlet like the Daily Mail. The VAPEXPO organisers didn’t mention how many people were in the study, but I can take a guess that it was more than 54 people, considering they have an audience of thousands.
In the study Dr Lappas had her participants smoke a cigarette, then an e cigarette, then just fresh air and measured how much their airways were obstructed using an instrument called an oscillometre. They also tested whether their lungs were inflamed, looking at how much nitric oxide (NO) was exhaled.
At the end of the study they found that vaping caused worse results on both tests compared to breathing fresh air. She didn’t however say whether it caused worse results than smoking tobacco.
But this was enough to write in her paper: ‘Electronic cigarettes immediately impairs lung function, lasting for less than 30 minutes after smoking.’ She went on to say that: ‘These results show that as it happens with cigarette smoking, e-cigarette smoking has more harmful short-term effects on asthmatics compared with healthy smokers.
She sent out a press release and her findings were soon splash across some major news agencies.
The thing about this test, is again it’s just common sense. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that vaping is more harmful than not vaping. No one is claiming, or has ever claimed as far as I know that vaping is 100% safe. The whole thing about vaping is that it’s safer than smoking tobacco. 95% safer according to the NHS.
So it’s interesting when we go back to the study at VAPEEXPO that they found that 82% of vapers were ex-smokers. That’s 82% of the people in the VAPEEXPO audience that are living their lives 95% safer thanks to e cigarettes.
I was an ex-smoker who switched to vaping because common sense told me it can’t be worse than smoking tobacco. The government have rammed down our throats how dangerous tobacco is for the last 30+ years, and we get it. Smoking tobacco is going to kill us. But no matter how graphic, or virulent the message, people still continue to smoke. So in theory, according to the government, every smoker is walking around with a death sentence over their head. In the last few years thanks to vaping we might just have a reprieve, but news agencies like the Daily Mail are doing their best to put people off. Why are they doing this? Nobody knows for sure. Why would they take an obscure study of 54 people, carried out in Greece and run it with a headline that states: “E Cigarettes Can Instantly Damage Lungs”. They would have been better served by running the study held at VAPEEXPO with the headline 82% Of Vapers Are Ex-smokers.
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