Debate on the safety of electronic cigarettes has been raging since the product’s introduction in 2003. Many of the arguments are incorrect information disseminated by the FDA with the help of big tobacco and big pharma.

In response to the heated debate, electronic cigarette suppliers recently formed a trade association to provide factual information about e-cigs to the buying public. Tobacco companies want to eliminate competition from electronic cigarettes and have followed an agenda of issuing warnings about e-cig dangers that have no basis in fact. The FDA conducted a very limited test of a few hand chosen e-cigarettes and then pronounced the products were not safe because trace amounts of a dangerous chemical were found in some of the products tested.

No further testing was conducted by the FDA nor did the government agency test tobacco products to ascertain if the same chemical was a component of standard cigarettes. The test was not replicated and offered no comparison to burning tobacco.

Consumers who wonder if electronic cigarettes are safe should consider that e-cigs contain 20 ingredients while tobacco cigarettes have 599 ingredients. When smoking tobacco you inhale more than 4000 chemical compounds. Claims are made that the additives in tobacco have been proven safe as food additives by the FDA. That is true as far as it goes. Those additives have not been tested for safety when burned and inhaled. Burning changes the chemical elements of some ingredients.

Poor nicotine is guilty by association with tobacco. Tobacco smoke is thought to lower the immune system in some smokers leaving them open to more colds and infections. We know for a fact that smoking tobacco causes cancers of the mouth, throat and lungs and increases risk of heart disease in smokers. These health problems are directly attributed to the tars and noxious gases of burning cigarettes inhaled by the smoker.

The properties of nicotine itself to not promote cancer in healthy tissue and nicotine has no mutagenic properties when separated from tobacco. There is no evidence that long term use of nicotine is detrimental to health. Nicotine is the reason we become addicted to tobacco. It is the fix we want when we light a cigarette yet it is not nicotine that damages our health.

Consumers have been using nicotine replacement gums, lozenges and patches for many year now with no apparent ill effects. Initially, nicotine patches were only available by prescription but as time passed it was clear the product posed no danger to the health of the public. Today you can buy all of those stop smoking aids freely at your local drug store.

Nicotine provided in a safe form is the antidote to the risks taken when smoking tobacco. The Royal College of Physicians concluded there is no suspicion of adverse health effects posed by long term use of nicotine in controlled doses. The safety of e-cigarettes is more apparent with every passing year the products are available for public consumption.

Mary Kay Rivers has become an expert on all facets of electronic cigarettes. Her articles about how e-cigarettes work or about the best electronic cigarette are well-known.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •

Filed under: Electric Cigarette

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!