Photo: Oksana ZUYKO
10 years ago, when the popularity of electronic cigarettes began to gain momentum, manufacturers pompously claimed that vaporizers help to quit smoking and reduce the risk of developing all diseases associated with tobacco addiction. They say they are safe and help you eliminate cravings for regular cigarettes.
There are more and more studies that show the opposite. For example, here is one of the latest global Korean studies, which gathered more than 4.3 million people over many years. It revealed a sad correlation: Those who quit smoking and switched to vaping increased their risk of developing lung cancer and dying from it. Regular smokers also had a high risk of developing lung cancer, but still slightly less than vapers. And the lowest, respectively, is for those who stopped smoking completely, abandoning both tobacco and electronic devices.
This trend was especially evident in people aged 50 to 80, the Korean team found. The study’s author, associate professor pulmonologist Kim Yongwook of Seoul National University in Seongnam, said doctors should warn patients who quit smoking about the high risk of e-cigarettes.
We recently wrote about another study: changes in the epigenome of epithelial cells in the mouths of regular cigarette smokers and vapers are the same. The epigenome is the first to respond to possible changes, responding to the influence of carcinogens. And these changes indicate an increased risk of developing lung cancer in the future. In this study, scientists also showed that the risk of developing cancer in vapers is no lower than in smokers.
The authors of the new study emphasize that doctors should warn patients who are quitting smoking about the high risks of e-cigarettes.
Photo: Mikhail FROLOV
By the way, for several years now, among adolescents and young people who smoke electronic cigarettes a lot, vaper’s disease is very “popular” – an acute lung injury, which is accompanied by severe shortness of breath, cough and chest pain.
So the security of electronics is really very exaggerated…
