- The US Surgeon General concluded e-cigarette vapor poses dangers to children
- However, a third of adults aren’t aware how harmful the puffs of air can be
- Long-term health effects of the ingredients in e-cigarettes are still unclear
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Cheyenne Roundtree For Dailymail.com
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One in three adults aren’t fully aware that electronic cigarette vapor is harmful to children, according to a new study.
Many adults are still unaware of this danger, although the US Surgeon General said e-cigarette vapor may expose children to nicotine and other harmful chemicals.
A new CDC study found this concerning because although the devices may be less toxic than traditional cigarette smoke, they still emit harmful substances into the air.
Long-term health effects of the ingredients and flavorings in e-cigarettes are unclear, causing the organization to encourage adults not to smoke around kids.
A third of adults are unaware that exposing children to vapor of e-cigarettes still can be harmful due to the air’s chemicals
THE END OF VAPING?
Teen vaping, which has been skyrocketing, fell dramatically last year in the United States, new figures have revealed.
A government survey suggests the number of high school and middle school students using electronic cigarettes fell to 2.2 million last year, from 3 million the year before.
Health officials have worried about the booming popularity of vaping products among kids and the potential impact on adult smoking rates in the future.
One possibility may be a growing push to ban sale of e-cigarettes to minors, including a federal regulation that took effect in August.
Another may be the influence of ad campaigns by the government and other organizations to discourage kids from smoking, the CDC said.
E-cigarettes may also be losing their novelty among teens.
The CDC polled adults in an online survey in 2015, questioning them if they thought if there was any harm exposing children to secondhand e-cigarette vapor.
These battery-powered gadgets use a heating element that turns liquid nicotine and flavorings into vapor that users inhale, which also releases other chemicals as secondhand smoke.
Overall, just 5.3 percent of adults who participated thought there was ‘no harm’ to kids.
Another 40 percent of adults thought it caused ‘little harm’ or ‘some harm’ to children.
Senior study author Brian King said: ‘The bottom line is that kids should not be exposed to the emissions from any type of tobacco product, irrespective of whether that product is smoked, smokeless or electronic’
King, who is a researcher with the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, added: ‘Although e-cigarette aerosol generally contains less harmful ingredients than secondhand smoke, it is not harmless; safer is not the same thing as safe.
‘It’s important for users of these products, particularly parents, to know the dangers of secondhand exposure to e-cigarette aerosol and to protect kids from this preventable health risk.’
To assess how adults thought about the risk of exposing kids to e-cigarettes, CDC researchers examined data from a survey of 4,127 adults 18 or older.
The survey asked people to consider the potential harms of all electronic vapor products including e-cigarettes as well as e-hookahs, hookah pens, vape pens and e-cigars.
Current e-cigarette users were almost 18 times more likely than people who never tried the devices to think the secondhand vapors caused no harm to children, and former e-cigarette users were more than seven times more likely to have this opinion, according to the results published in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease.
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VAPING CAUSES AS MUCH DAMAGE TO DNA AS REGULAR TOBACCO
The debate over the safety of e-cigarettes rages on – and now new research says they could potentially be as dangerous as regular tobacco cigarettes.
The devices which contain nicotine-based liquid could be as harmful as unfiltered cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage, according to University of Connecticut scientists.
They also found that the vapor from non-nicotine e-cigs caused as much DNA damage as filtered cigarettes, possibly due to the chemical additives.
Cellular mutations caused by DNA damage can lead to cancer.
As well as whether the e-cig contains a nicotine or non-nicotine liquid, the level of DNA damage e-cigs causes also depends on the amount of vapour the user inhales and how many other additives are present.
Previously, the rise in e-cigarette popularity has been praised for helping nicotine addicts to quit their smoking habit – more than 9 million adults in the US and around 2.9 million in the UK vape.
But because they are still fairly new, their long-term effects are not fully known.
Compared with people who never smoked traditional cigarettes, current smokers were more than four times more likely to consider secondhand e-cigarette vapor harmless for kids, and former smokers were about twice as likely to have this opinion, the study found.
Men were more than twice as likely as women to think secondhand e-cigarette fumes were harmless for kids.
Adults aged 45 to 64 were less likely to be uncertain about the risk of exposing kids to second-hand e-cigarette smoke than younger adults aged 18 to 24, the study also found.
One limitation of the study is that researchers didn’t have detailed data to determine how often current or former e-cigarette users and cigarette smokers had used these products, the authors note. That means responses from heavy users were included in the same categories as people who only smoked or vaped occasionally.
Still, the findings underscore the need to raise awareness about the potential harms as researchers continue to investigate the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes, said Dr. Alexander Prokhorov, director of the tobacco outreach education program at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
‘The products simply have not been in existence long enough to investigate their long-term effects,’ Prokhorov, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
‘It took us decades to fully understand the devastating consequences of conventional cigarettes and we are regularly discovering more and more illnesses and disorders attributable to active and passive smoking,’ Prokhorov said.
‘I would not be surprised if ongoing studies will soon report additional facts on first- and second-hand vaping and health.’
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