Does vaping have second hand dangers?

by Kaylin

We have had some new customers asking if there is an issue of exposing others to second hand vapor. We know that some politicians have advocated for banning vaping in the same places where smoking is already banned. Some lawmakers consider it an unknown potential danger and are acting preemptively, in effect saying it is better to be safe than sorry. With all of the fuss surrounding this issue, is there any reason to believe that secondhand vapor is dangerous?

There are many articles all over the web that basically say the same thing -no! For example, in a recent study published in the journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, several popular American and British brands of e-cigs and traditional cigarettes were tested against the air we breathe day to day to see just how harmful these products really are to bystanders. The analysts in this study took air samples of three flavors from Blu eCigs, two flavors from Skycigs, and common traditional cigarette brands such as Marlboro and compared their output against ambient air. What they found when measuring levels of harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHC), was that when combined, all of the HPHC in the e-cig vapor was less than 0.17 milligrams. The ambient air was measured at 0.16 milligrams, and the traditional cigarettes produced a whopping 30.6 milligrams, 180 times higher than the amount produced from e-cigs! Even still, that’s just the average. In certain brands of traditional cigarettes, as much as 1,500 times more HPHC was found than in e-cigs.
Though nobody can definitively answer the question of whether or not e-cigarettes are safe, it is clearly shown in this and other studies to be a substantial improvement from traditional cigarettes – not only for the user but for everyone around them as well. Approximately 53,800 people die every year from second hand smoke. Given all the evidence we have at our disposal, there is no reason to believe second hand vapor poses any real danger to anyone. Public health officials and lawmakers who claim otherwise and insist that regulations be put in place to protect the unsuspecting public from imaginary dangers are just being unnecessarily hasty and ignorant. There is no good reason to ban vaping indoors. All this serves to accomplish is to scare the public into believing vaping is dangerous, which will undoubtedly lead to fewer vapers and, therefore, more smokers. Officials in charge of determining how to best protect the health of the public would be wise to recognize that vaping does not pose a grave danger to anyone, and that it is actually a major public health benefit because it replaces smoking.