The Hidden Hazards in Those Vapors

E-cigarette companies are working against the clock to prove that their products are safe for consumption. The Food and Drug Administration has given them until August 8, 2018, to produce the research — that a little less than two years’ worth of work that some experts estimate will cost companies upwards of $3 million per product.

And after this week, the prospects don’t look good.

Flavored e-cigarettes release cancer-causing agents in their vapor.

Scientists at Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, found that flavored e-cigarettes release cancer-causing agents in their vapor. Dr. Andrei Khlystov and his colleagues at DRI tested three common e-cig devices, with five different flavors each. They also tested two unflavored liquids. In each of the flavored vapors, Dr. Khylstov measured the concentration of 12 different chemicals, called aldehydes, that have been linked to cancer in humans.

“Our results show that production of toxic aldehydes is exponentially dependent on the concentration of flavoring compounds,” Dr. Khylstov said in a media release about his work. Aldehydes, of which formaldehyde is the most familiar, “are a class of organic compounds that are quite reactive and thus could damage human cells,” he explained to LifeZette.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies formaldehyde as a carcinogen, a compound that initiates cancerous mutations or irregularities.

Related: Why E-Cigs Are So Deceptive

“We have not measured toxicity directly; we have measured concentrations of compounds (aldehydes) that are known toxics,” said Dr. Khylstov. In other words, we’re not sure exactly how toxic these chemicals are — only that they have been associated with toxicity in past research. When the flavored compounds get heated to high temperatures, they break down into “smaller chemical species, some of which are aldehydes,” he said.

Up to this point, manufacturers of e-cigarettes claimed that e-cig users didn’t have to worry about harmful vapors. “They do not expose the user, or others close by, to harmful levels of cancer-causing agents and other dangerous chemicals normally associated with traditional tobacco products,” said Craig Youngblood, president of the InLife e-cigarette company, to WebMD.

However, Dr. Khylstov asserted that his research team found otherwise: “We were the first to notice a link between toxic aldehydes and flavoring compounds.”

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Teenagers are more likely to experiment with e-cigarettes than with cigarettes. By the time they reach 12th grade, 16.2 percent of students report using an e-cig in the last month, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Boys are twice as likely to try these products than girls are, and many of them have no idea what the products actually contain.

Related: How to Stop Smoking for Real This Time

But now that the products have made inroads among the American public, the FDA may have trouble getting rid of them. In a survey of 9,000 e-cig users, 70 percent said they would buy the product from non-licensed sellers, purchase them internationally, or even begin to manufacture the products themselves. Whatever future research comes forth, regulators will have a tough time addressing this popular product.