Vaping instead of smoking still exposes you to toxic metals like lead — here's how worried you should be

marijuana vaporizer vaping vape

A new study found that people who vape may be inhaling potentially dangerous levels of toxic metals like lead.
But the study did not directly compare the levels with those of conventional cigarettes — which some research suggests are higher and more worrisome.
Most research suggests vaping is a healthier alternative to smoking, especially for adults who want to quit. But those studies have also revealed some of its potential downsides.

Smoking kills. No other habit has been so strongly tied to death.

In addition to inhaling burned tobacco and tar, smokers breathe in toxic metals like cadmium and beryllium, as well as metallic elements like nickel and chromium — all of which accumulate naturally in the leaves of the tobacco plant.

It's no surprise, then, that most of the available evidence suggests that vaping, which involves puffing on vaporized liquid nicotine instead of inhaling burned tobacco, is at least somewhat healthier.

Still, we don't have a ton of research on how vaping affects the body and brain.

It's been less than a decade since the first vape pen hit store shelves as a bulky device the size of a whiteboard marker. Since then, countless varieties of electronic cigarettes have become available, from slim black sticks with tips that light up like conventional cigarettes to chrome cartridges that allow the user to personalize things like the amount of nicotine in each hit and the length of a pull.

In 2015, a group of researchers from medical schools across the globe decided to find out just what was inside the vapors that e-cig users were inhaling.

Trapped deep in the aerosol particles that vapers breathe were some of the same toxic metals and metallic elements found in conventional cigarettes, including cadmium and nickel. They also found potentially unsafe levels of several other dangerous substances such as arsenic, chromium, and manganese.

They published their findings this week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"These heating coils, as currently made, seem to be leaking toxic metals — which then get into the aerosols that vapers inhale," Ana Maria Rule, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who led the study, said in a statement.

Despite these findings, it remains unclear what inhaling these levels of substances does.

"We've established with this study that there are exposures to these metals, which is the first step, but we need also to determine the actual health effects," Rule said.

Some of the same toxic metals that can be found in cigarettes were also found in e-cigs

tobacco leaves drying Tobacco plants are sponges for toxic substances.

As they grow, their roots suck up a range of metals and metallic elements that have accumulated for years in the soil. Those chemicals quickly make their way into the leaves of the plant, where they collect until the tobacco is burned in cigarettes and released into a smoker's lungs.

When e-cigarettes first hit store shelves, many users assumed the devices would be free of these chemicals, providing a clean delivery mechanism for the single drug they wanted to be inhaling: nicotine.

The new study, which involved recruiting 56 daily e-cig users from Baltimore and testing their devices in a lab at the Bloomberg School, suggests that these devices may not be so simple.

In fact, users appear to be inhaling toxic substances like lead, nickel, chromium, and manganese in concentrations that either approached, met, or exceeded the limits defined as safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Consistently inhaling high levels of these metals has been tied to health problems in the lungs, liver, immune system, heart, and brain, as well as some cancers, according to the US Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

But since the study did not set out to directly compare the levels of toxic metals in vape pens with those in cigarettes, it's unclear just how both products stack up.

The problem seems to emanate from the heating needed to vape. In comparing the levels of lead in the e-cig liquids before being heated against those in the heated liquids and those in the aerosols, the scientists found concentrations that were 25 times greater in the aerosols.

"The actual levels of these metals varied greatly from sample to sample, and often were much higher than safe limits," Rule said.

We need more research on regular vapers, rather than simply on devices as sold in stores

A salesman displays electronic cigarettes during the first international fair of electronic cigarette and vapology

Most research surrounding e-cigs has focused on so-called cigalikes, first-generation devices that look like regular cigarettes and include a disposable mechanism preloaded with liquid.

But people who vape every day typically use reusable devices they can tweak to match their preferences. These devices, known as mods or "tank-style" devices, come with a battery, a mouthpiece, and include a tank to be refilled with liquid.

Nailing down the precise health effects of these devices is a tall order — the outcomes could vary just as much as the devices, with users being able to modify things like the nicotine content, heat, and inhalation time. But researchers will need to tackle this obstacle before we know the real effects of these devices.

"Direct sampling from e-cigarette consumers rather than purchasing e-cigarettes from a store or company is thus needed to assess typically used devices," the researchers wrote.

The largest report on the health effects of vaping still suggests that toxic substances in e-cigs are lower than in regular cigarettes

A large recent report on the health effects of vaping from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that e-cigarettes can still be helpful for adults looking to quit smoking. One of the reasons is that vaping exposes people to what the researchers called "significantly lower" amounts of potentially toxic substances.

But while adults may use e-cigs as a tool to quit smoking, young people may end up using them to start, the authors of the newest report concluded.

"E-cigarettes cannot be simply categorized as either beneficial or harmful," David Eaton, a vice provost at the University of Washington at Seattle who led the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.

Eaton said that in certain circumstances, such as when teens use them and become addicted to nicotine, e-cigarettes "adverse effects clearly warrant concern." But in other cases, like when adults turn to e-cigs to quit smoking, "they offer an opportunity to reduce smoking-related illness."

"Given their relatively recent introduction, there has been little time for a scientific body of evidence to develop on the health effects of e-cigarettes," the authors wrote.

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