According to a new study people near an electronic cigarette smoker will inhale only nicotine, but not chemicals from cigarette smoke. Researchers still arguing about whether electronic cigarettes help or conversely, attract young people to smoke, and how they act on human health.
“Electronic cigarettes contain nicotine and some residues of toxic substances.
But it isn’t known to what degree non-smoker people are exposed to nicotine and chemicals in the same room with e-cigarette smokers,” said co-author of the study Maciej Goniewicz, a doctor from the Institute of Cancer Researches in the hospital of Rosuell Park in Buffalo, New York.
He and his colleagues conducted two studies about the passive exposure to electronic cigarettes’ vapors within the laboratory. The results were published in the Nicotine and Tobacco Research journal.
In the first study, researchers used electronic smoking machine to generate steam in a closed space. Whereupon they measured the amount of nicotine as well as carbon monoxide and other potentially harmful gases and particles in the laboratory.
In the second study were involved five people who regularly smoked regular cigarettes and electronic cigarettes. Every person enters in the room and smoked their usual brand of electronic cigarettes for an hour with two five-minute intervals, until the researchers measured air quality. Then, the room was ventilated, and the experiment was repeated with regular cigarettes.
The researchers measured nicotine levels, which amounted 2.5 micrograms/m3 in the first study. Levels of nicotine from electronic cigarettes in the second study were slightly higher, about 3.3 mcg/m3. But after regular cigarettes, the level of nicotine was in 10 times higher, about 32 mcg/m3. “We know that nicotine is relatively safe compared to other dangerous toxic substances in tobacco smoke,” said Gonievich. In this experiment, was found NO toxic substances after electronic cigarette use that can not be said about regular cigarettes, after their use in the air were found a large number of toxic substances and carcinogens.
“We found that non-smokers are exposed to nicotine but NOT to toxic substances, being in close proximity with people smoking electronic cigarettes” – said Gonievich.
According to scientist, additional studies are needed to determine how these findings correspond to “real life,” when a lot of people at the same time use electronic cigarettes in a non ventilated room.