Chemicals in flavored vaporizers could be highly toxic when heated, scientists say

Chemicals in flavored vaporizers could be highly toxic when heated, new research suggests. The study found that 505 hazardous chemicals, including 127 that are acutely toxic and 153 health hazards, are formed as a result of vaping.

Researchers used artificial intelligence to simulate the effects of heating chemicals found in 180 vape flavors. The scientists suggest their approach may help reveal the long-term health risks of vaping before clinical disease occurs in the general population.

Liquid flavors in e-cigarettes are heated to high temperatures so they form vapors that are then inhaled. The original source of the flavors came from the food industry, where they are safe but were not intended to be heated to high temperatures and inhaled, the study suggests.

Study authors Donal O’Shea and Dan Wu, of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, and Akihiro Kishimoto of 1 IBM Research – Tokyo, Japan, wrote: “Aerosols produced by vaping electronic cigarettes contain extremely complex uncharacterized mixtures of pyrolysis . products, whose health implications are, to date, largely unidentified.

“Before the effects of vaping become evident in the general population, AI can be exploited to provide guidance to the public, policy makers and health professionals. They added: “Since vaping is a novel and unprecedented stress on the human body, with the ability to generate pyrolysis products more toxic than their parent compounds, it seems prudent to strictly limit the number of chemical entities in e-liquids.”

Jacob George, professor of cardiovascular medicine and therapeutics, University of Dundee – who was not involved in the study – said: “There are almost 40,000 different flavors on the world market today and understanding their effects will require a combination of techniques including automatic mapping algorithms and creating neural networks like this.

“Although this study cannot give us definitive answers about the risks of aromatized vapors to human health, this study can be a useful first step in identifying signals that could then lead to further and more in-depth research into the heat-induced breakdown of chemicals used. in flavors.

“This study combined artificial intelligence with previously published information to predict that when a combination of chemicals in flavored vapes is heated, it could result in the production of a harmful toxin, and these predictions can then be tested with further studies .

“There is, to date, very little good-quality evidence on the safety or harm of these flavors, and so I welcome new strategies, as used by these researchers.” The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.