[ad_1]
(MENAFN – The Conversation) Vaping causes serious illness in young adults and healthy teens. It causes life-threatening toxicity and lung damage, which can shorten life and sometimes even death – with seemingly irreversible and incurable lesions.
A recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 53 confirmed cases of young users of hospitalized electronic cigarettes with severe pulmonary toxicity and injuries clearly shows that this is the case. The average age of these patients was 19 years old.
Relatively short history of vaping resulted in hospitalization, weeks of intensive care, pulmonary insufficiency, urgent need for heart-lung bypass, and, after all unsuccessful attempts, unnecessary deaths in healthy young people .
As a pulmonary imaging scientist, I develop new ways of looking at the chest so that lung abnormalities can be easily measured and monitored in patients. I see the devastating effects in the lungs of cigarette and cannabis smokers. I also see how the airways are destroyed and how millions of airbags seem demolished or completely destroyed, resulting in shortness of breath, a miserable quality of life, and then death.
Because of my experience in developing new ways to visualize the lungs and the impact of smoke and inhaled gases on lung health, I was troubled by the fact that the government and Other regulators have adopted a passive approach to the risk of e-cigarettes.
I am alarmed that the marketing of e-cigarettes is so ubiquitous, persuasive and widespread, especially when it targets children and adolescents whose growth and development of the lungs are not yet complete.
Fat found in the lungs
Among the recent reported cases of patients with pulmonary toxicity associated with vaporization, oily substances have been found in their white blood cells, lung tissue and respiratory tract.
Although these oils may be related to the nicotine and THC mixtures contained in the cigarette that these patients have used, it is not yet known – and remains difficult to understand – how such a serious and life-threatening lung disease can be triggered by Use of the electronic cigarette.
A patient is prepared for a pulmonary MRI.
(Parraga Laboratory), author provided
I think it's helpful to visualize this by imagining a pound of butter as a solid and blending into a liquid and heating up again at high temperatures, the butter becomes a gaseous vapor, which can be inhaled. The steam coating of butter, although delicious on popcorn, forms a solid when it cools inside the lungs and becomes a toxic initiator of inflammation and inflammation. failure of the lungs.
A quarter of high school students in vaping
Electronic cigarettes have been touted as a safe and cool alternative to cigarettes. Not surprisingly, this marketing has worked well in children and adolescents.
In 2017-2018, the number of high school students using e-cigarettes in the United States doubled to 21%, which is higher than the smoking rate among children and adults. Estimates for 2019 suggest that a quarter of North American high school students use electronic cigarettes.
Spray devices also offer the ultimate flexibility: it is relatively easy to mix and match inserts, oils and active ingredients. This means that the products are marketed and sold to children who have the time and energy to invent new mixtures, have a high risk tolerance and have a complex need for peer approval to be able to try them too.
What's wrong? Why are we surprised by the current situation?
Aggressive marketing, lack of security testing
We have known for decades that the lungs are damaged because of exposure to chemicals in hazardous occupations and chronic inhalation of gas and smoke. So I wonder why anyone would assume that e-cigarettes would not be harmful or harmful?
I wonder why the resplendent and aggressive marketing of electronic cigarettes is acceptable in convenience stores and gas stations everywhere, while cigarettes are properly kept, incognito, behind locked and opaque shelves in the same store.
Worse still, the small "vape shops" also offer free aftermarket replacement products – many of which have dubious origins and are not subject to any safety testing. This must be exposed, studied and stopped.
Fashionable electronic cigarettes must be banned
For all these reasons, the regulation of vaping products, their advertising and their placement in stores must be re-examined and tightened, like tobacco products.
Pleasure and fashion electronic cigarettes that are promoted directly to children should be banned. Health professionals and scientists need to shout out dangers outside of their offices, labs and clinics – until things change.
Multinational corporations such as Big Vape, Big Cannabis and Big Tobacco have always found – and will continue to find – ingenious new ways to take advantage of the tragic decisions of adults, adolescents and children, their addictions and misconceptions. risks related to inhaled products.
It's like cigarettes again.
- children
cigarettes
Pulmonary diseases
Big Tobacco
Nicotine
e-cigarettes
vaping
teenage vaping
MENAFN1509201901990000ID1099006518
[ad_2]
Source link