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New Study Suggests E-Cigs Orders of Magnitude Safer Than Tobacco Cigarettes

There’s an awful lot of talk right now about whether we can be sure electronic cigarettes are safer than traditional tobacco cigarettes. All this talk seems to be ignoring the reams of research being conducted constantly on that very question, but now at least we can put one particular qualm to bed:

Are tobacco flavoured e-liquids releasing the same amount of toxins as tobacco cigarettes?
Turns out the answer is a resounding ‘no’. This includes e-liquids that have the tobacco flavour extracted from actual tobacco leaves, too.

A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health by Dr. K. Farsalinos and his team has found that in tobacco-flavoured E-Liquids the levels of tobacco-derived toxins is orders of magnitude lower than in actual tobacco cigarettes.

This includes E-Liquids that use natural tobacco leaves as a flavouring extract, so called NET E-Liquids (Natural Extracts of Tobacco).

The group found that the amount of nitrosamines released by tobacco flavoured E-Liquids were 146 – 1447 times lower than that released by burning tobacco while nitrate was 1360 times lower in the E-Liquids.

The levels in the NET liquids were slightly higher but still significantly lower than in traditional tobacco cigarettes.

They also found that while the nicotine content of the liquids deviated from the level indicated on the labels by an average of 5.9% (1.5% for NETs), there was no observable difference between the regular liquids and the NETs, suggesting that the method used to extract the flavour from the tobacco leaves does not extract the nicotine as well.

Click here to read the report on the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health website.

Click here to see Dr. Farsalinos’ Twitter feed. It’s a fantastic window into the hard work he and the people around him are doing to further e-cig science.

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