Vaping Is Making People Really Sick — And No One Knows Why

By Lauren Rearick


A deadly lung illness with possible ties to vaping is sweeping the United States, and health experts cannot decide the cause.


As of September 12, 2019, the Centers for Infection Control and Prevention confirmed that six people have died and 383 more are ill as a result of a mysterious infection considered to be connected to vaping, CNBC reported. With health experts unable to pinpoint an exact purpose of the illness, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration have warned against continued usage of e-cigarettes and THC vaping products, and President Donald Trump is considering a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.


Vaporizers, or e-cigarettes, are commonly compared to established cigarettes, and while both are tobacco products, they have stark contradictions, according to Franziska Rosser, MD, a pediatric pulmonologist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. “The cigarette is a tobacco product that causes harm and death,” she told MTV News. “Many things compared to cigarettes are much less harmful. Being much less harmful doesn’t make something safe.”


There’s evidence to propose that Juul Labs, one of the premier e-cigarette businesses, illegally marketed its products as much less harmful than they actually are, alluding that they’re the healthier choice than established cigarettes. However medical professionals mention vaping has plenty of health impacts of its own.


“[Vaporizers] are not just water vapor and steam,” Dr. Yolanda Evans of Seattle Children's Hospital told MTV News. “There are other substances in there that are used to help keep the product’s shelf life and help it become more of an aerosol to get into the body. Those things are not without consequences.”


Rosser added that the aerosol indoors e-cigarettes are created by electronic nicotine delivery systems, or ENDS, which “have been noticed to contain dangerous chemicals like volatile natural compounds (VOC), particle pollution, carcinogens, nicotine, and metals,” Rosser mentioned. “E-liquids can contribute substances that have been deemed typically safe to eat, however have not been deemed safe to breath. As a lung doctor, I can tell you that food in the lungs is harmful.”


From vape pens to hookah sticks, finding an other way to get a nicotine fix isn’t new — yet the potential that some of those new techniques are causing deaths and reports of lung damage is definitely something that should cause concern, Dr. Starla Martinez, director of the Robert T. Stone Respiratory Center at Akron Children’s Hospital and also a pediatric pulmonologist, told MTV News. And with homemade vaping solutions popping up, it’s tough to regulate what you’re actually putting in your lungs. What we do know, according to Martinez, is that “the recent tragic cases are probably related to vaping things that destroy the lungs, either rapidly or slowly. However it’s also early have the ability to mention which substances are the worst.”


With statistics into the repercussions of vaporizing still pending and long-term implications totally unknown,  it’s far also soon to mention definitively what, if any, element held in ENDS would be the cause of extreme illness or death. (In fact, early speculation put the potential blame on cartridges that have hit the black market.) Although as these mysterious illnesses become more and more normal, it’s best to proceed carefully. Up until these products are totally understood, Martinez believes there’s only one course of action: “The thing we do know for sure is that the safest thing to put into your lungs is just tidy air without additives, preservatives, or flavorings.”