These vape flavors are damaging your immune cells

A recent study published by Frontiers in Physiology showed that certain e-cigarette flavors (also called e-liquids) could damage your immune cells.

“If you’ve never smoked or used tobacco products or e-cigarettes, don’t start,” says the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Vaping started out as a less harmful alternative to tobacco before it became a mere trend for those who want to smoke sans the nicotine. But as the study suggests, there are specific flavored vapors that are deemed ‘toxic’ and just as bad as your run of the mill cigs.

Just because it’s less harmful doesn’t mean it’s risk-free.

Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Centre led the study and found that flavors used in e-cigarettes caused inflammatory and oxidative stress responses in lung cells. The flavor compounds were tested as safe for ingestion, but not for inhalation. “Cinnamon, vanilla, and butter flavoring chemicals were the most toxic but our research showed that mixing flavors of e-liquids caused by far the most toxicity to white blood cells,” tells Dr. Thivanka Muthumalage, one of the study’s first authors. “Currently, these are not regulated, and alluring flavor names [such as] candy, cake, cinnamon roll, and mystery mix attract young vapers.”

True enough, if you look around during lunch breaks or coffee breaks, you can easily find a group of people blowing off steam via e-cigarettes. Then again, a lot of people also use e-cigarettes as a stepping stone to break the bad habit. (If you’re one of them, good.)

The study plans to undergo further research, simulating live vaping by exposing white blood cells to e-liquid aerosols in an air-liquid interface system.

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