Risk continuum quantified

The use of electronic cigarettes carries much less cancer risk than does tobacco smoking, though the use of some types of e-cigarettes is more-risky than the use of others, according to a story by Iqra Mumal on lungdiseasenews.com quoting a new study.

The research, entitled, Comparing the cancer potencies of emissions from vaporized nicotine products including e-cigarettes with those of tobacco smoke, was published in the journal Tobacco Control.

The story said that both the scientific community and the public had been divided over the health risks associated with vaporized nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burn devices.

Studies had shown that vaporized nicotine products, or VNPs, could expose people to cancer-causing agents, but the question was how much cancer risk they posed.

Dr. William E. Stephens of the University of St. Andrews, the UK, led a team that sought to determine the cancer risk of the individual compounds in VNPs, and then calculate an overall VNP cancer risk.

They looked at published analyses of emissions to generate cancer-risk figures for a number of nicotine-delivering products, including cigarettes, e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, and medicinal nicotine inhalers.

Each of the products were found to have different cancer potencies. Cigarette smoke had the highest. potency, while most e-cigarettes had cancer potencies that were less than one percent of cigarette smoke, though a small minority had much higher potencies than did others.

This minority of e-cigarettes was associated with high levels of carbonyls – or carbon compounds – that the products generated when a lot of power was applied to their atomizer coils.

Another finding was that heat-not-burn devices had lower cancer potency than did cigarette smoke but much higher potency than most e-cigarettes had.

The team concluded that cigarettes posed the highest lifetime cancer risk, and that they were followed on the cancer-risk scale by heat-not-burn devices, then e-cigarettes and medicinal nicotine inhalers.

Mumal’s story is at: https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/08/25/study-finds-that-cancer-risk-of-e-cigarettes-is-much-lower-than-that-of-cigarette-smoke/