E-Cigarettes Expose Those Nearby to Significant Nicotine

WASHINGTON - Nov. 20, 2014 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 20, 2014): Far from being a completely safe substitute for smoking a tobacco cigarette, e-cigarettes have been found to release into the air around the user a significant amount of the chemical nicotine - one of the main causes of the tens of thousands of annual heart attack deaths experienced each year by American nonsmokers exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke.

        Perhaps more ominous, concentrations of the nicotine-byproduct (and biomarker) cotinene in subjects required to breathe air in the homes of smoker and of e-cigarette users was “statistically similar,” according to a very recent study published in the scientific journal “Environmental Research.”

        “This is one of the few studies to examine the dangers of using e-cigarettes is a real world environment, and how it affects innocent nonsmokers around the users,” says professor John Banzhaf, one of the first to call attention to the many dangers of e-cigarettes, and to take legal steps to have the FDA and several attorneys general take action against them.

        There are already a growing number of bans of bans on their use in public and in workplaces in North Dakota, Utah, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Seattle as well as in many smaller jurisdictions, says Banzhaf, who helped lead the fight for the initial bans in Suffolk County, NY, and in the state of New Jersey.

        This new study, which shows what actually happens when nonsmokers are near people using e-cigarettes, provides even more support for prohibiting their use in no-smoking sections.  The concentration in their bodies of nicotine - which, by constricting blood vessels and increasing blood pressure, is a major factor in triggering deadly heart attacks in nonsmokers - was almost 3 times higher than in a home where e-cigarettes’ weren’t be used.

        The FDA and many national health organization are concerned that e-cigarettes  - which have not been proven to their satisfaction to help people quit smoking, as nicotine patches and gum have - present serious health risks to users as well as to those around them, lead young people using these "candy cigarettes on steroids" into a life of nicotine addiction, discourage smokers from quitting, and mislead many potential users about the dangers.

        Recent reports also indicate that they can also be life-threatening to young children who lick or bite the cartridges which contain deadly concentrations of the neurotoxin nicotine, as the New York Times reported in "Selling a Poison by the Barrel: Liquid Nicotine for E-Cigarettes."  For example, the Kentucky Regional Poison Control Center reporting a 333% increase in calls for help involving the unregulated devices in just one recent year.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/ @profbanzhaf