March 27, 2018

expert reaction to research on toxicity of e-cigarette ingredients

A new study, published in PLoS Biology, examines the toxicity of e-cigarette ingredients.

Dr Ed Stephens, Senior Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, said:

“Sessano and colleagues have developed a useful tool for screening large numbers of e-liquids for toxicity using laboratory experiments on human cells. This study of 148 e-liquids sourced in the US indicates that adding certain flavouring ingredients can increase toxicity. Similar but smaller-scale experiments by others have shown that toxic effects from vaping are nevertheless low (but not zero) and very much lower than smoking. It will be difficult to evaluate these new results until this test is applied to common aerosols to which the public are regularly exposed, particularly tobacco smoke and diesel fumes.”

* ‘Evaluation of e-liquid toxicity using an opensource high-throughput screening assay’ by M. Flori Sassano et al. published in PLoS Biology on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

Declared interests

None to declare.