Vapes confiscated from British school pupils were found to contain high levels of lead, nickel and chromium after being tested in a laboratory, the results showing that the users could be inhaling more than twice the daily safe amount of lead and a shocking nine times the safe amount of nickel.
Some of the vapes also contained harmful chemicals like those in cigarette smoke, reports the BBC.
High levels of lead exposure in children can affect the central nervous system and brain development, according to the World Health Organisation.
The Inter Scientific laboratory in Liverpool, which works with vape manufacturers to ensure regulatory standards are met, analysed 18 vapes, most of which were illegal and had not undergone any testing before being sold.
Lab co-founder David Lawson said: “In fifteen years of testing, I have never seen lead in a device. None of these should be on the market – they break all of the rules on permitted levels of metal, and are the worst set of results I’ve ever seen.”
In “highlighter vapes” – designed with bright colours to look like highlighter pens – the amounts of the metals found were:
• Lead: 12 micrograms per gram, 2.4 times the stipulated safe exposure level
• Nickel: 9.6 times safe levels
• Chromium: 6.6 times safe levels
The metals were thought to come from the heating element, but the tests showed they were in the e-liquid itself.
Also detected by the lab were compounds called carbonyls, which break down, when the e-liquid heats up, into chemicals such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, also found in cigarette smoke – at 10 times the level in legal vapes. Some even had more than cigarettes.
Manufacturers have to follow regulations on ingredients, packaging and marketing, and all e-cigarettes and e-liquids must be registered with the Medicine and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). But the agency is not required to check the claims made in paperwork and has no power to investigate unregistered products.
University of Nottingham epidemiology professor John Britton, who sits on the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Group, said: “Lead is a neurotoxin and impairs brain development; chrome and nickel are allergens, and metal particles in general in the bloodstream can trigger blood clotting and exacerbate cardiovascular disease.
“The carbonyls are mildly carcinogenic and so with sustained use will increase the risk of cancer, but in legal products, the levels of all of these things is extremely low so the lifetime risk to the individual is smaller.”
However, he added, there had been an increase in illegal products recently and “some are hard to distinguish from those which are potentially legal”.
It is illegal to sell vapes to under-18s in the UK, but a survey in March and April showed a rise in experimental vaping among 11- to 17-year-olds from 7.7% last year to 11.6%.
BBC article – Vaping: High lead and nickel found in illegal vapes (Open access)
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