{"id":8724,"date":"2014-09-08T15:22:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T20:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=8724"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:42:06","slug":"to-vape-or-not-to-vape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=8724","title":{"rendered":"To Vape, or Not to Vape?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content-region\" class=\"content-region row nested\" style=\"color: #000000\">\n<div id=\"content-region-inner\" class=\"content-region-inner inner\">\n<div id=\"content-inner\" class=\"content-inner block\">\n<div id=\"content-inner-inner\" class=\"content-inner-inner inner\">\n<div id=\"content-content\" class=\"content-content\">\n<div id=\"node-4067\" class=\"node odd full-node node-type-slideshow\">\n<div class=\"inner\">\n<div class=\"content clearfix\">\n<figure id=\"attachment_8728\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8728\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/flavors_650.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8728\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/flavors_650.jpg\" alt=\"Vapor Girl smells faintly - but pleasantly - of e-cigarette flavoring. Credit: Mary Lide Parker.\" width=\"500\" height=\"430\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8728\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vapor Girl smells faintly &#8211; but pleasantly &#8211; of e-cigarette flavoring. Credit: Mary Lide Parker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span class=\"drop\">C<\/span>ream of mushroom. Pi\u00f1a colada. A whole Thanksgiving dinner, from turkey to\u00a0pie.<\/p>\n<p>These are some of the flavors of e-cigarettes you can buy online or in stores. About half of\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>\u00a0smokers have tried e-cigarettes, according to research by\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0postdoc Jessica Pepper. But is that a bad thing? A good thing? Or both? \u201cWe have no long-term health data. We don\u2019t know whether they help people quit smoking,\u201d says Pepper, who so far has made her career studying e-cigarettes at the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0Gillings School of Global Public\u00a0Health.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, Pepper also found that pediatricians and nurse practitioners who treat adolescents aren\u2019t well-informed about e-cigarettes. In fact, the number-one way health-care providers say they\u2019ve learned about e-cigarettes is from their patients, Pepper says. \u201cClearly, we need to be doing some education. But we\u2019re not entirely sure what to tell doctors to\u00a0say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the next few years, researchers at two\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science will help figure out just what to do about e-cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health fund 14 of these centers around the United States to research tobacco-derived products.\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0is the only institution to have two separate centers\u2014one to study the medical effects of tobacco products, and the other to figure out how to educate the public on the risks (and, perhaps, the\u00a0benefits).<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years after the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>\u00a0government first warned the public that cigarettes cause lung cancer and bronchitis, almost one in five adults still say they smoke some days or every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death both in the United States and around the world, Pepper says. Some researchers think e-cigarettes might be the thing that will turn the\u00a0tide.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2007, e-cigarettes have gone from almost nonexistent in the United States to being available in about one-third of convenience stores, according to a study by\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0PhD candidate Shyanika Rose. But most people order their e-cigarettes online. There are also brick-and-mortar stores, including at least two in Chapel Hill (<em>see slideshow<\/em>), devoted to selling the supplies. Vaping, as it\u2019s called, is completely legal, and may be less harmful than smoking, researchers\u00a0think.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe most dangerous part about regular cigarettes is the combustion\u2014the act of lighting something on fire,\u201d Pepper explains. An e-cigarette doesn\u2019t light anything on fire, so it doesn\u2019t produce smoke. Instead of tobacco leaves, an e-cigarette is filled with tobacco-derived nicotine mixed with a flavoring and a type of alcohol (not the kind you drink) to keep it wet. You fill your battery-powered e-cig with this e-juice, which evaporates when the battery heats it up, producing a visible vapor instead of smoke. Vaping doesn\u2019t produce a lingering, unpleasant odor like smoking does, although you might smell the flavoring if you\u2019re standing near someone using an\u00a0e-cigarette.<\/p>\n<p>So far, each new study about the effects of e-cigarettes has told us something different, Pepper says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got one study that says e-cigarettes have one-tenth to one five-hundredth of the amount of chemicals that are in cigarettes, but you\u2019ve got a publication that came out a few weeks ago that says certain e-cigarettes, used in a certain kind of way, can produce as much formaldehyde as a regular cigarette.\u201d The discrepancies, she says, probably have to do with the strength of the e-cigarette\u2019s battery. The newest models can heat e-juice to higher temperatures, which can produce more harmful\u00a0chemicals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPretty much everyone, even the most conservative public-health people, agree that smokers will be best off if they quit\u2014but if they can\u2019t quit, they\u2019re better off going to e-cigarettes,\u201d says Pepper\u2019s mentor, health-behavior researcher Kurt Ribisl, who heads one of the two\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0tobacco centers. In a 2013 study, researchers randomly assigned cigarette smokers to use either nicotine patches or e-cigarettes. At the end of the study, the rates of health problems in the two groups weren\u2019t very different, Ribisl says. But that was just after six months. It will take years to determine the long-term effects of\u00a0vaping.<\/p>\n<p>In the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0School of Medicine, physiologist Rob Tarran is particularly worried about flavorings in e-cigarettes. Flavorings were banned from regular cigarettes years ago because of their appeal to children, but that\u2019s not the only problem with flavored tobacco products. \u201cRemember popcorn lung?\u201d Tarran asks. Diacetyl, a chemical used to give microwave popcorn its buttery taste, has made factory workers and at least one microwave-popcorn eater sick from inhaling the stuff. \u201cFlavorings are safe if you ingest them,\u201d Tarran says. \u201cBut no one knows what they do when they\u2019re\u00a0inhaled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He and\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0pediatrician Ilona Jaspers are testing some of those flavorings in the lab. Jaspers\u2019 lab purchased 15 of the most popular e-cig flavorings. First, they grow lung cells in a lab dish. Then they expose the cells to different levels of the flavoring to see what exactly they do to lung cells. Meanwhile, chemist Gary Glish and his lab are meticulously analyzing the flavorings to identify each compound that vapers\u00a0inhale.<\/p>\n<p>Tarran\u2019s also concerned about the effect of inhaling nicotine itself, whether through smoking or vaping. He leads one of the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0tobacco centers in researching the effects not only of e-cigarettes, but also regular cigarettes, little cigars, and other tobacco products. Nicotine is known to be a carcinogen, Tarran says. He and Jaspers take samples of tissue to study from the nasal cavities of smokers at\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0Hospitals. They\u2019ll also be testing samples from people who vape, to find out exactly what vaping does inside the\u00a0body.<\/p>\n<p>Seventy to eighty percent of people who use e-cigarettes are also tobacco users, and that\u2019s one of the biggest problems with e-cigarettes, Pepper and Ribisl say. \u201cQuitting smoking is very good for your health, but simply\u00a0<em>cutting back<\/em>\u00a0on smoking has very little benefit,\u201d Pepper explains. \u201cIf you go from being a pack-a-day smoker to being a half-pack-a-day smoker and also using e-cigarettes, there\u2019s not going to be much health\u00a0benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8726\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8726\" style=\"width: 404px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/sylvestre_vaping_650.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8726\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/sylvestre_vaping_650.jpg\" alt=\"Credit: Mary Lide Parker\" width=\"404\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8726\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marc Sylvestre, head mixologist at Vapor Girl in Chapel Hill, says he hears stories from customers about their bronchitis vanishing and their voices going from hoarse to normal after switching to vaping. Credit: Mary Lide Parker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cSome people who normally might have quit are now vaping during the day,\u201d Ribisl points out. \u201cBefore e-cigarettes, those people might have quit because they\u2019d have to go eight hours at work without a cigarette. But now they\u2019re dual-using, and that\u2019s bad for public\u00a0health.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That worries Tarran, who thinks that some e-cigarette users are getting a\u00a0<em>lot<\/em>\u00a0of nicotine. \u201cA regular smoker takes maybe a dozen puffs on a cigarette,\u201d he says. If you smoke a pack of 20, that\u2019s about 240 puffs a day. \u201cOur preliminary studies show that e-cigarette users take up to 900 puffs a day on e-cigarettes,\u201d Tarran says. \u201cThe idea is that if you smoke a regular cigarette, you feel satisfied, you\u2019re done. E-cigarettes may not give that same feeling of\u00a0satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That may be the reason why many smokers who try e-cigarettes reject them altogether. Pepper did a study that showed that about 45 percent of people who try e-cigarettes for health reasons\u2014for example, to help quit smoking\u2014don\u2019t stick with it. One of their biggest complaints, she says, is that e-cigarettes don\u2019t deliver a nicotine fix as quickly as smoking does. But newer e-cigarette models are getting better at nicotine delivery, making it likely that more smokers will pick up vaping, Pepper\u00a0says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnalysts predict that e-cigarettes are going to surpass regular cigarette sales in the next decade, and I think they\u2019re right,\u201d Ribisl says. \u201cI think you\u2019re going to see very, very few people smoking\u2014probably fewer than 5 percent of the population 10 years from now.\u201d In 2011, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes in the United States was $5.62 and rising,\u00a0according to the Centers for Disease Control. E-cigarette manufacturers say that disposable e-cigarettes, which often cost between $6 and $11, are equivalent to two packs, making them cheaper than regular smoking. Refillable, rechargeable e-cigarettes cost more up front\u2014often $40 to $60 or more for a starter kit\u2014but after that, the e-juice equivalent of a pack of cigarettes can cost as low as $2 or\u00a0$3.<\/p>\n<p>Rising sales are part of the reason why the federal government should start regulating e-cigarettes, Ribisl says. \u201cWe did a study that had minors buy e-cigarettes off websites. We found that over 70 percent of the sites sell to kids. They aren\u2019t verifying age properly,\u201d Ribisl says. And those companies aren\u2019t doing anything illegal: so far, there\u2019s no law against the interstate sale of e-cigarettes to kids, the way there is for regular cigarettes. The\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FDA<\/span>\u00a0is still in the process of trying to gain regulatory authority over\u00a0e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"content-bottom\" class=\"content-bottom row nested \" style=\"color: #000000\">\n<div id=\"content-bottom-inner\" class=\"content-bottom-inner inner clearfix\">\n<div id=\"block-views-layout-block_3\" class=\"block block-views odd first grid16-16 producer-layout\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"block-views-boilerplate-block_2\" class=\"block block-views even  grid16-8\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"block-views-boilerplate-block_1\" class=\"block block-views odd  grid16-8\">\n<div class=\"inner clearfix\">\n<div class=\"content clearfix\">\n<div class=\"view view-boilerplate view-id-boilerplate view-display-id-block_1 boilerplate view-dom-id-1264e847792b55e24ba20f0cfcc76e1c\" style=\"font-style: italic\">\n<div class=\"view-content\">\n<div class=\"views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last\">\n<div class=\"views-field views-field-field-boilerplate-value\">\n<div class=\"field-content\">\n<p>Kurt Ribisl is a professor of health behavior in the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0Gillings School of Global Public Health. Robert Tarran is an associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, and Ilona Jaspers is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, both in the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0School of Medicine. Gary Glish is a professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. The\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">UNC<\/span>\u00a0Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science are receiving about $40 million from 2013 to 2018 from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and are working on a variety of tobacco-related research\u00a0projects.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Click <a href=\"http:\/\/endeavors.unc.edu\/to_vape_or_not_to_vape\">here <\/a>to see the full Endeavors article by Susan Hardy with additional pictures.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cream of mushroom. Pi\u00f1a colada. A whole Thanksgiving dinner, from turkey to pie. These are some of the flavors of e-cigarettes you can buy online or in stores. About half of U.S. smokers have tried e-cigarettes, according to research by UNC postdoc Jessica Pepper. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-natural-sciences-mathematics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8724"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46862,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8724\/revisions\/46862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}