There is no such thing as passive vaping

Passive smoking is not only deadly, it’s obnoxious to be around. But it would be wrong to say that smokers don’t care about how their habit affects others, they do, and as we found in a recent study, 62% of smokers want to quit. Passive smoking is an unavoidable bi-product of smoking and until the invention of vaping, there was no real alternative. People, wrongly, assume that a vapour cloud is as toxic as cigarette smoke. ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Public Health England found that, to date, there have been no identified health risks of passive vaping to the health of bystanders.²

Secondary smoking is deadly because the toxins released when tobacco is burned are incredibly poisonous to the human body.  When burned cigarettes release thousands of toxins that not only go direct into the lungs of the smoker but hang in the air and cling to surfaces.

Vaping doesn’t produce smoke, or water vapour; it produces an aerosol. It might look like a cloud of steam, but it isn’t. Aerosol has a very short active life, meaning it doesn’t linger, which helps prevent any real risk of passive vaping.

Any chemical will change state when heated. Vaping produces an aerosol cloud, which consists of fine particles. It is often confused with water vapour as it looks like clouds of steam (it does contain H₂O but it isn’t considered to be water vapour). The aerosol cloud contains particles of material that have been transformed by the process of heating. The three core ingredients of e-liquid will be converted into different ratios of chemicals depending on the ingredients used.

While it is known that vapour can include toxins, they appear in very small quantities. Regulated e-liquids are also subject to emissions testing to ensure their safety.

The most significant difference between smoke and vapour is that how they are produced. Smoke is produced by burning the tobacco which produces a staggering 7,000 chemicals, at least 69 of which are known to cause cancer.  E-liquids are heated which ensures that the compounds do not change state in the same way as they would if they were burned.³

Conclusion

Vaping is 95% less harmful smoking and DOES NOT affect those around you in the same way as smoking.¹

Vape with sensitivity to those around you, but vape in peace, you’re not harming anyone nearby.

References:

1. McNeill, A. et al. Evidence review of e- cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018. A report commissioned by Public Health England (2018).
2. Andy McEwen and Hayden McRobbie, Electronic cigarettes: A briefing for stop smoking services, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) in association with Public Health England (2016)
3. Medical Editorial Content Board, American Cancer Society, ‘Harmful Chemicals in Tobacco’ (2015)