Is Vaping Safe?

Is vaping safe

Is vaping safe?

 

“Are you sure you should be smoking that?”

 

“Don’t they explode in your face?”

 

“I heard it might be even worse for you than smoking”

 

Yes, we’ve heard it all before. Despite the meteoric rise in vapers over the past few years, the question still remains about how safe the technology really is. It’s probably even crossed your mind in the past – what exactly am I putting into my body?

 

As seems to be the case with anything nowadays, there’s a lot of information out there to digest. But what’s the real news, and what’s the fake news? Here, we give you answers to some of the key questions.

 

Vaping vs Smoking

 

Time to put the fears of all you vapers to rest. Because yes, vaping is absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt safer than smoking.

 

But you don’t have to take our word for it. Earlier this year, Public Health England published an update on their 2015 e-cigarette evidence review. Among many other things, they found that:

  • “Vaping poses only a small fraction of the risks of smoking, and switching completely from smoking to vaping conveys substantial health benefits.”
  • “E-cigarettes could be contributing to at least 20,000 successful new quits per year and possibly many more”
  • Vaping is “at least 95% less harmful (than smoking), and of negligible risk to bystanders.”
  • Over half of smokers either falsely believe that vaping is as harmful as smoking or just don’t know

 

And it’s not just the people over at Public Health England that agree. Cancer research UK note that while e-cigarettes do contain nicotine, they do not contain cancer causing tobacco. They also add that, “while nicotine is addictive, it does not cause cancer.”

 

Now while it’s never 100% safe to breathe anything other than air into your lungs, the real question is whether or not vaping is safer than smoking. And the answer is yes. Tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death in the UK, responsible for over 100,000 deaths every year.

 

So if you’re looking for a safe alternative to smoking that still gives you your nicotine fix, then pick up a vape.

 

But don’t vapes explode?

 

Type ‘exploding vapes’ into google and you’ll be met with a whole host of scare stories about vaping gone wrong. Some of the headlines make for pretty scary reading, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find that it’s mostly just scaremongering.

 

There are real-life stories about mods exploding in people’s hands or pockets, but these aren’t your typical mods. The only way your mod has any chance of exploding is if it’s a mech mod, meaning it’s unregulated.

 

Mech mods don’t have the same safety features that a regulated mod has, because they’re built from scratch. And with anything you’re building yourself, there’s a lot of risk involved if you don’t know what you’re doing.

 

The only part of a mod that can explode is the battery, meaning being careless with your batteries could get you in trouble. Regulated mods have in-built safety features to prevent this from happening, but unfortunately, mech mods do not. Unwrapped or loose batteries, improperly charging your device or exposing your batteries to the elements can all carry risks.

 

We recommend only using a mech mod if you’re an experienced vaper, and have done plenty of research beforehand. Regulated mods remove all the risks, meaning you can vape safe in the knowledge that you’re in no danger. For more about mech mods, check out our blog here.

 

But what about the e-juice?

 

As for the e-juice itself, the two main ingredients are Propylene Glycol (PG) and Vegetable Glycerin (VG), which are simply additives from the food industry used, for example, to sweeten or preserve food.

In terms of the flavourings used in your juice, these are all food-grade, meaning you’ll be able to find most of them on your local supermarket shelf. The last ingredient is nicotine which, as we’ve already covered, isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Several studies have found that it’s no more dangerous than caffeine, though do steer clear if you’ve got any existing heart conditions.

 

To sum up, don’t believe every story you see about ‘the dangers of vaping’. Leading health organisations from around the world have found that vaping is far better for your health than smoking, while “the evidence does not support the concern that e-cigarettes are a route into smoking among young people.”

 

So if you’re looking to quit smoking, you can rest assured that switching to vaping is a safe alternative that will leave you feeling a lot healthier.