I'm somewhat an earlyish adopter here. That is, beginning back in 2010 before everything found its way into grocery and convenience stores. That is, before there were physical stores specializing in vaping supplies, back when only a few Internet companies were actually located in the US. The time when users often had to get everything from the source areas of China. (Even though the original concept was created in the US, the recent methods were pioneered in China.)
Certainly, as far as anyone knows, none of this history and experience necessarily means anything, in the sense of how qualified I am to discuss vaping. However, in my defense, I'd say there's enough experience there to be at least somewhat qualified to offer some information and opinion on the subject. Information derived at least partially from those experiences and other experiences like them. Thus I have at least some first-hand idea of what I'm writing about.
At the simplest, vaping is just inhaling some sort of atomized/vaporized/heated material or liquid. In our sense of vaping, vaporizing a particular liquid mix. There is a heater (a coil made of resistive wire that electrically is put through) and a carrier liquid that is flavored and that much of the time also contains nicotine. The entire device doing the heating is often called an electronic cigarette. Many times it is not electronic (just electrical) and is not a cigarette (because nobody is lighting dried vegetable matter on fire). Yes, if the process is controlled by circuitry other than just the heater that's pretty much electronic, and often the device itself on purpose resembles a cigarette, and performs much the same function. An airplane is still not a bird. Either way though, quibbling about these recently invented terms of e-this and e-that (terms that are perhaps not quite always correct) might not be quibbling worth carrying out. So we'll just point out that the terms might not be exactly explanatorily descriptive per definition specifically.
One might believe that as somebody who'd been vaping for a number of years, I'd be claiming that vaping is factually all sorts of things compared to smoking. Proven to be not as inconvenient and damaging to self and others, less expensive, and safer. Not at all. I'm saying maybe yes, sometimes. True, in some cases with certain qualifiers. Depending.
Anyone telling you that vaping is cheaper, better, faster, smarter, safer, healthier? Either they don't vape and don't know, or they're just making things up. Yet the same goes for anyone telling you that vaping is more expensive, worse, slower, dumber, more dangerous, unhealthy. By and large, none of these things are facts and you should be wary of anyone suggesting they are.
What is vaping then?
What vaping is, that depends. Mainly, it's another way to get nicotine. Unless there's no nicotine in it. It's cooler and more sophisticated than lighting dry leaves on fire. Unless it just makes you look like a trendy fool, even if you're not actually, and probably even more so if you really are. It's a way to quit smoking. Unless you just replace smoking with it. Healthier? Maybe, maybe not. If you overdo it, maybe it's worse than smoking. If you're a sloppy jerk, you'll probably still be one, only you can't flick ashes on people or toss the remaining part you didn't smoke on the ground... Although certainly somebody could do things that are essentially equivalent to flicking ashes or breathing in faces. At some point then, anything one might say about either tobacco or about nicotine can easily be true in somewhat the same ways as anything else can be.
Sometimes vaping is less expensive, but other times it isn't, especially if trying out or collecting a number of vaping devices (the power sources and the atomizing components both) or when using various brands of liquids and flavors. That's personal preference though, how much one might or might not spend, using vaping as a replacement for smoking versus making it a hobby. Just like some people buy expensive brands of cigars and humidors and build rooms just for it. (Yes, swilling down brandy is optional with either of them.)
When it concerns other matters, many are less clear as to what vaping might be as compared to smoking. These differences are at times visibly obvious, at least when viewed with somewhat of an objective eye. For example. Atomized food additives, flavoring, (and liquid nicotine) inhaled and then exhaled is not the same thing as igniting dried tobacco and other materials inside thin paper inhaled and then exhaled. A cloud of vapor is less bothersome and second-handy than a cloud of tobacco. Unless others take offense simply to either the behavior itself or to any intrusion no matter how small, vaping is clearly not smoking.
Still, when it comes to "safety" especially, much is lacking. There are not decades of material establishing that inhaling heated PG or VG, flavor (and nicotine) is safe. Or not. Yes, we might expect more long-term safety for the user and others with something where all the cancer-causing by-products of historic common tobacco burning and inhaling are removed. Yes, we can also point out there is no conclusive scientific evidence (using actual repeatable peer-reviewed objective science) that "second-hand smoke" is dangerous. We might argue that nicotine liquid solution inhalation isn't chemically all that different than liquid caffeine solution ingestion, but we won't because really it's not. Still, whatever else, that e-cigs and e-liquid are safer than cigarettes/pipes/cigars/snuff/chaw is no fact. Is being in a small room and having your eyes irritated by atomized VG any different than breathing in the exhalation of thirty smokers in an airplane cabin during a fourteen hour flight, not really. Which is to say, second-hand is some casual and infrequent sort of being nearby, but the environment over time can make it a case where it's actually first-hand.
Since often an e-liquid has nicotine though, we can broaden the subject to what does nicotine do to you if you don't have the tobacco part of it. We can then ask, what do gums / patches / lozenges / liquids - that have nicotine in them - do to a person over decades and decades. So that goes for inhaling it, heated or otherwise as much as does putting it on the skin or chewing it and so on. Does nicotine in a mist into the lungs do different things than going through the skin on your arm or in your mouth? I'm guessing the answer to that at this point is that nobody knows. But they do sell all sorts of other things with nicotine for your bloodstream at the store, and we know how dangerous some are. We can also say that everything suggests the danger with those things is mostly not because of the nicotine but because of the delivery mechanism.
Some have argued that children will want to try some bubblegum or strawberry flavor, but nobody responsible is going to let children vape something (nicotine or not) any more than they'd give them a pipe or a bottle of tequila. Well, not these days anyway. That's a different subject though, and in any case stores sell vaping materials just like they do tobacco products. Locked up, in the back, adults only. Let's stop short at going off the deep end and comparing comparing e-cigs to booze, pornography and gambling using playing cards. We might though suggest the "kids might get it" argument as either a strawman or just a stupid sort of grandstanding. It's akin to suggesting that since some people drive into walls or skydive without parachutes, we have great reasons to ban driving and skydiving.
Materials for ecigs etc
A number of considerations exist in the materials used. Here are some of them in an overview; if anyone reading this is desiring to go a DIY route much more research will be required. Either way, it should give a better idea of some of the details.
The batteries that heat the coils are often or usually lithium rechargeables. Many batteries themselves have circuitry that prevents overcharging or short-circuits. These can be in sealed cases or as loose batteries put into mechanical or electronic mods. If a mod is mechanical, the battery needs to be protected. Electronic mods may have this requirement built in.
The heating materials are often coils made of nichrome wire, perhaps we can say comparable to what might be in a space-heater. The wire has varying sizes or resistance to create varying amounts of heat on some scale of size. There are also ceramic and others types of elements to heat the liquids.
There are cartridges to hold liquid and atomizers to heat liquid, and there are cartomizers that are both together. Some newer designs of the cartridges are tanks that fill with liquid, and some cartomizers are tanks with an atomizer. The concepts are essentially similar, a single piece combining both and two (potentially more) that are separate pieces.
There are also drippers where the bottle with the liquid functions as the cartridge and more liquid is dropped directly on the coils (or some wicking going through the coils) as more liquid is needed. Many times (such as if the coils are exposed, such as a top-feeding rebuildable system) it's possible to drip onto any set of coils by removing a tank, cartridge or top or directly through a mouthpiece.
In many non-dripping cartridge/atomizer and cartomizer designs, the liquid going through coils being heated is delivered by a wick made of stainless mesh sometimes, but usually the material holding or feeding the liquid is made of cotton or of silica thread. Depending on the heater and setup, the feeding material needs various properties that are high-temperature and non-conductive by and large.
The liquids themselves are usually mostly PG, VG or a PG/VG blend. Often times there is also water, but that's tricky because PG and VG are water soluble miscible hygroscopic. Generally, when in use in ecigs, VG produces more vapor (clouds of vapor) and PG creates a stronger feeling when inhaling (throat hit). Also since VG is thicker, it can cause issues in feeding it through a wick and coil, especially when the eliquid is cold. That's largely dependent upon the feeding mechanism and a number of other factors perhaps too esoteric to cover here. Many find that PG dries their mouths more than VG does, but that difference might be more subjective and dependent upon the degree of vaporization, the flavorings, and the nicotine strength. Especially at higher nicotine levels.
Flavors are many and varied. There is tobacco flavored (often with a large component of vanilla flavor), fruit or herb flavored, or a mix of flavors tobacco and other. Some flavors are artificial and some are natural, not all flavor types are used because of taste when atomized or other considerations related to inhalation. Since the flavors are a smaller part of the entirety, they are concentrated to some extent.
Flavors normally do not contain any sugar, as heating/melting/burning sugar will clog things up at the least, and PG and VG are sweet anyway. Some flavors are oil-based and hard to mix with the other ingredients, so at times contain alcohol. Other flavors just normally are made with alcohol to some or large extent - check out the flavoring section at the grocery store in the baking isle for real-world examples. In ecig usage however, the alcohol in such flavorings that contain it should mostly be burned off upon heating and not be intoxicating even if attempting to do so.
The Nicotine part of it
Regardless of how we slice it, there's no real direct comparison of eliquid nicotine strengths to the nominal quoted nicotine levels in cigarettes. That's partly because absorption of nicotine via eliquid is as difficult to measure as absorption via smoking. Another is that many people vape without nicotine, or do so at very low levels.
Whatever you might think personally about being around exhaled PG or VG is another matter. Even whatever worries you may have abut that food sweetener that's 90% PG or that cough syrup that's 90% VG, there's only one potential ingredient in eliquid that is anything to directly consider as anything dangerous. After all, you might be bathing with a bar of 80% VG being on your skin, or washing your hair with 50% PG.
Like caffeine and alcohol and a number of other things natural or artificial (including food and medicine) concentrated nicotine is a form a poison and thus can be dangerous. This is true in tobacco (the plants in nature and the dried leaves used in creating tobacco products) and in the derivatives of tobacco; patches, gums, lozenges, liquids. Nicotine sold for eliquid use in mixing (not for vaping) is normally not full strength, it is mixed with PG or VG as a carrier. Thus we end up with something where nicotine is by far the minority ingredient.
Typical eliquids for use (to vape) are quoted in strength as being some value such as 10 mg (per ml) or 10% or just 10. They are all exact except the percentage is 10 times larger; it is 1%. As a scale of vaping-ready nicotine strengths, 0 to 36 covers the lowest to the highest most people would potentially actually vape. On that scale of 0 to 36 (0 to 3.6%), 0 is "nonic", lower strengths are on the order of 4-8, higher strengths as 12-18 and very high as 24-36 (Some would suggest that 24-36 are too high to vape though, and indeed many commercial liquids do not have any strength above 18.)
Even if we consider 24-36 as mixing strength only and going beyond normal usage, there are obviously even higher levels than 2.4 or 3.6 percent nicotine. At the high end is obviously pure nicotine at 100%. At 100%, that's mask and gloves and industrial precautions. Pure nicotine liquid is one thousand milligrams per milliliter. Thus 99% nicotine is 990mg/ml, 25% nicotine is 250mg/ml, and 10% nicotine is 100mg/ml. In absolute terms then, the "highest vaping strength" of 36mg/ml is 3.6% and a somewhat high of 18 is 1.8% nicotine Even many hardcore longterm vapers might find themselves unable to enjoy vaping 18 much less over 18.
Nicotine at strengths beyond those pre-mixed and for vaping
Let's start out here simpler, because it gets rather wordy ranty confusing later as I poorly attempt to balance two things. One, that "normal strength" nicotine liquids are not usually dangerous in most situations. But like a boiling pan of water, or an iceberg, it nicotine liquid often requires at least a bit of caution. Two, that "high strength" and "mixing strength" and "pure nicotine" have various degrees of caution. Just like bleach for sanitizing a countertop (say 4% sodium hypochlorite solute mixed 1 part to 100 parts water) isn't isn't laundry strength isn't the concentrated chlorine that goes into a swimming pool. A stopped care is more like one going 1/2 mile an hour than it is like one going 80.
So the short of that scale is that getting some 10 or 18 eliquid on some of your skin isn't a big deal, but you should wash it off sooner rather than later because you might rub your eyes. Shake hands with somebody. Once you go above a normal strength though, it's more important to be more and more careful to match how strong a chemical is. Because remember, almost everything is a poison at some point on the curve.
For mixing purposes the strengths of nicotine can vary greatly. That is because like with flavorings (usually from 2 to 25 percent of the mix) the PG/VG (water) itself takes up the most of the solution. Mixing strength nicotine must balance the need for a stronger amount to be mixed down with how safe it is to generally handle. Thus it's often either 48 or 100, that is, 4.8% to 10% nicotine. This is far safer to handle when mixing than anything higher is. To stress it once again, nothing much above 18 is very vapable, and anything in mixing range is going to be unflavored. We don't want any eliquid with nicotine on any appreciably large area of our or anyone else's skin for any lengthy period of time, be that because of absorption itself or later rubbing the eyes after it gets on they fingers. That is obviously far more important at the higher levels found is mixable strengths. For example, I personally wouldn't worry much about a small amount of 10 ml or even 18 ml getting on my skin for a few seconds or minutes. For vaping, 48 or 100 can't be vaped as is any more than 185 proof grain alcohol is drinkable as-is, regardless that a shot at 80 or even 120 proof is achievable. Not that it's good, but it's not like saying maybe you can get by with a puff or two of that angel dust or that falling 10 feet is no big deal compared to falling 250.
---psa---
Which sorry we're not done, and no, all that is not exactly true. I mean, it's far less dangerous to take a single 1.5 oz shot of 185 proof grain alcohol (not so good idea to really bad idea) than it is to drink a liter (Darwin Award). Same goes for getting 10mg/ml on your fingers and then washing it off a short time later versus pouring 100mg/ml nictotine on your legs and then going to sleep a few hours.
Let's not leave it at that though, just to be very clear about it some more. You are not all that wise if you take a shot of Everclear, but you are suicidal if you drink an entire 750ml bottle. Likewise you are being pretty unwise if you get vaping-strength eliquid on your skin and don't wash it off fairly quickly, but you are being suicidal if you rub mixing-strength nicotine liquid on your skin and leave it there uncaring. Not that those things are exactly the same. But it's like a set of knives, they're not dangerous if you don't do silly things like juggle them. It's not any more unsafe than stove burners or wall outlets are, as long as you don't misuse them.
To add to that even more though, don't leave any amount of eliquid with nicotine in it lying around where anyone can get to it and get it on their skin, in their eyes, into their mouth or other external opening into the body such as ears and eye-sockets. It's like if you have a cup of coffee -- drink it. Just don't leave that jar of concentrated caffeine open on the shelf where it can get knocked over onto somebody or into the sugar jar.
Other helpful hints. Don't store propane tanks in your vehicle's engine compartment, don't jump off the roof (none of that pile of leaves, trampoline or cape is going to help), don't feed your dog chocolate, don't try and lower the cat into the full bathtub, don't pour a bucket of 91% rubbing-alcohol on a lit grill, don't dangle your child over a dingo pit or hotel railing, don't drive through downtown at one fifty mph, don't jam knitting needles into your ears, don't cut your head off with a chainsaw.
---psa---
So, to yet again once more reiterate again redundantly, we especially do not want 48 or above eliquid on the skin at all ever, even less than we want to take a bath in high-poof grain alcohol or drink it without mixing it with cola and some lime. No terrible idea is more or less dangerous if you do it wrong and do it stupid. Although there is a difference between these things. You can buy a bottle of almost pure alcohol in just about any liquor store or from most any couple of guys with a still. But you're not going to hardly find even 24 liquid to vape, 36 is more difficult, and you are going to have to find a specialty shop catering to DIY to get 48 or 100. Then even if a specialty shop has it, they are going to ask if you' know what you're doing before they sell it to you. (If you read a story about a tragedy with eliquid, it was somebody having 48 or above that didn't know what they were doing at all.)
Waste
That's a consideration too. In the earlier days, and even now with many of the disposables or low-end rechargeables, the situation is like with smokers. Some people are just pigs. They might easily just blow vape in your face, and so too might they just toss a used battery on the ground, or throw it into a garbage disposal or fireplace.) One of the most used replaceable and one-time use retail styles of cartomizers is an 808D style. If not a tank style, they're very often metal. Many of the other cartomizers or atomizers are also all or largely metal, such as the 901 or 510. Even some of the plastic-based cartomizers have metal threads. Most have metal somewhere, but now as in the early days the 808D cartomizers are prevalent and metal. Unlike the specialty rebuildables, they don't get reused for long periods of time. So while both are not biodegradable, one gets tossed a lot more often. We might easily debate how much the planet or a river cares about a bunch of plastic k-cups or a bunch of little cylinders of metal lying around. But if you throw either on the ground they're still there and it's sloppy and ugly and messy. With a metal cartomizer though, it can also get stuck in a tire or your foot. Perhaps you're talking a nice walk on the beach, and ouch that hurt look what someone left for you. Okay, so the point there is there's a difference between an ugly butt and something that will pop your tire. Still, that is not because there's anything wrong with the item; it's because of what a person does with it that's the problem.
In this, materials to vape with aren't any different than glass grapefruit juice bottles or tin cans full of pineapple.
All in all
There's a lot of missing information and a lot of misinformation about this entire subject. Rule of thumb or common sense or logic suggests that vaping isn't the same as smoking in a great deal of ways. There's no dried crushed leaf (and usually "other materials") that are filled with carcinogens with vaping. Yet still, we do not have a lot of data on what inhaling vaporized PG/VG/Water/Flavor/Nicotine (in whatever mix) does. Just that it isn't what we know about the other. If the nicotine in ecigs is the same amount into the body as cigs, it's non issue as the effects are the same for either, nicotine-wise. Burning leaves seems as if it would probably be worse to inhale than a food additive/sweetener/etc. Any commercial flavoring used in an eliquid is edible, so again it's back to the question of heating/inhaling.
There are some studies (okay maybe an old one or few that have been largely discounted) about the effects of heating eliquid. Still referenced from time to time, but they were tests of amounts and temperatures that are not anything anyone actually would vape. That nobody vapes. The tests for the studies also mostly used power levels and elements that are not in most commercial sorts of system, which such systems have timers that shut off voltage after a few seconds anyway. Such temperatures would creating a vape that would taste so horrible nobody would ever hit the notional amounts "vaped" in the test -- because they would immediately stop, gagging, and wonder what was horribly wrong with their equipment. Like lighting the filter on a cigarette on fire. Is it possible to create a 50 watt vaping element system that feeds little to no liquid and has no shutoff? Sure, just like it's possible to buy a carton of cigarettes and throw them into a blast furnace, or like it's possible to strap a rocket on your car and cause a giant explosion. They aren't really any good for studies about normal use though.
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Some of the chemical formulations used in the post are
VG : Vegetable Glycerin : Glycerol : propane-1,2,3-triol
Ingredient in many food and beverages; sweetener, filler, thickening agent
Ingredient in cough syrups, toothpaste, mouthwash, skin care products and soaps
Smoothener, lubricant and humectant in medical, pharmaceutical and personal care medicines and preparations
PG : Propylene glycol : Propane-1,2-diol
Liquid sweetener, ice cream, coffee drinks, soda.
Pharmaceutical and personal care vaporizers and liquids
Solvent for oral, injectable and topical pharmaceuticals
Nootropics
Nicotine: (S)-3-[1-Methylpyrrolidin-2-yl]pyridine
Caffeine: 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione
Neurotoxic physchoactive
Grain alcohol: Ethanol CH
3CH
2OH
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