Knowledge, Guides, and News

I've been a vaper for about 3 years now, I’ve heard countless false claims and stories from people about vaping. Today, we’re actually going to dive a little bit deeper into these topics.

First up is the classic formaldehyde debate. In 2015, a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Stating that e-cigarettes and vapes actually output more formaldehyde than traditional cigarettes. Upon looking further into the study, at a 3.3-volt output on the e-cigarette they were using they actually didn’t find any traces of formaldehyde. But it was when they bumped up the voltage from 3.3 volts up to 5.0 volts on that same device. This is where they found formaldehyde more than 10 times that of normal cigarettes.

On the surface, this sounds pretty bad, but let’s actually dive a little deeper. The conditions used in this study are pretty unrealistic, You’d have to crank your wattage way higher than it would be tolerable to vape. At 5 volts in their test, this would have caused the coil to instantly burn out, and your coil will actually start deteriorating. Which would cause one of the worst dry hits ever known to man. At this point the coil isn’t even vaping, it’s burning.

In short, in order to find traces of formaldehyde in a vape, you’d have to repeatedly vape an extremely burnt coil. Which leaves this theory debunked. 

Next up is that e-liquid contains antifreeze, and I’ve heard this so many times. Where this common misconception came from is one of the four main ingredients in eliquid is propylene glycol. Which is also found in certain types of antifreeze. Propylene glycol is widely used in everyday items, such as food, drinks, toothpaste, and a plethora of other things. Propylene glycol is also used in asthma inhalers. There are no studies proving propylene glycol itself is toxic or harmful to people. So if someone walks up to you and says you’re ingesting antifreeze just politely tell them they probably are as well.

There's also the “We don't know what’s in liquid”. This is a fun one because here at DashVapes, we actually manufacture a few e-liquid lines from start to finish. E-liquid contains 3 main ingredients with an optional fourth. The 3 main ingredients are propylene glycol which is what we just talked about, vegetable glycerin which acts as a base for your e-liquid and all of your necessary flavourings. The optional fourth ingredient is nicotine, whether you choose to get it with or without. The argument of “We don’t know what’s in e-liquid” gets dissolved with studies not only showing that we completely understand what’s in e-liquid but we also have a solid understanding of the toxicity of them which is extremely low.

Next up is exploding vapes. Now we’ve actually covered this topic a couple times in previous videos. I’m gonna leave some links leading to those videos in the description down below. But what it boils down to is user error. About 90% of the vapes that we find on the market use a battery called an 18650 battery.  Now these batteries are also used in laptops, flashlights and even in Tesla cars. Now all of these batteries are prone to overheating when mishandled. This is why we can’t stress enough to learn proper battery safety when diving into these products. Again to learn more about battery safety check the links in the description down below.

Last up on our list is “Second-hand vapour is toxic”. Now we all know that secondhand smoke is almost or just as bad as smoking a cigarette. But where does vaping stand on the spectrum? Well there are numerous studies stating that vaping is 95% cleaner and safer than traditional cigarettes, but where we can actually start comparing is the harmful pollutants between vaping and ambient air. A study posted in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology tested vapour from a vape for eight different harmful or potentially harmful pollutants, compared to ambient air. The test concluded with the vapour having 0.17 milligrams of harmful pollutants as compared to ambient air, having 0.16 milligrams. Now traditional cigarettes took top place with 30.6 milligrams in the air. In short, vaping is almost as safe as ambient air but with that being said, you still want to be respectful to everyone around you.