Is There Such A Thing As Passive Vaping?

Does Second Hand Vapour Have a Detrimental Effect On The Health Of People Around You?

The Background

One of the dangers of tobacco smoking that we really only started paying serious attention to over the past two decades or so is the threat to health that passive smoking poses. This secondary smoke danger was overlooked for a long time as the anti-tobacco movement focused on the harmful effects to the individual. Now lots more emphasis is placed on this particular danger, with the smoking ban which prohibits employees and workers from being forced to inhale secondary smoke in their work place (including pubs, cinemas, airports etc) now having been in place for several years.

Passive Smoking Takes Its Toll

There has also been plenty of examples of the damage that breathing in secondary smoke had already done before the UK’s smoking ban was introduced in 2007, with one of the more famous examples being that of Record Breakers star and trumpet player Roy Castle, who attributed his lung cancer on the passive smoking he had been subjected to throughout his many years performing in smoky clubs and pubs.

It’s the very seriousness of this problem that has many people concerned with regards the potential effects of passive vaping. Even though e-cigarettes have been proven to be a far healthier alternative to tobacco smoking and the vapour exhaled from an electronic cigarette dissipates almost immediately, some people have rightly sought to establish whether or not there are any lingering chemicals which pose a threat to non-vapers.

Vaping is now seen as a healthier lifestyle.

Research into Passive Vaping Effects

“Electronic cigarettes produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes. The study indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions based on the compounds analyzed.”

~ Inhalation Toxicology

To this end, several studies have been conducted by independent researchers using a variety of methods to establish exactly what changes to the air the exhaled vapour produces. While studies of this kind should remain ongoing, the results so far strongly indicate that passive vaping poses little to no danger. In fact, the research seems to prove that passive vaping is not even a thing, let alone something that should be associated with the proven threat that passively inhaling secondary tobacco smoke poses.

Research published in Inhalation Toxicology, a peer-reviewed medical journal that focuses on respiratory research, compared the pollutant concentrations present in tobacco smoke with e-liquid vapour.

They discovered that while exhaled tobacco smoke predictably posed significant potential danger to human health when inhaled indirectly (passively), the vapour from the e-liquid of electronic cigarettes did not. Their e-cigarette research concluded that “electronic cigarettes produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes. The study indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions based on the compounds analyzed.”

E-Cig Vapour Test Results

Another scientific e-cig study at the Fraunhofer Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institute’s Department of Material Analysis and Indoor Chemistry in Germany concluded that e-cigarette vapour again did not contain any detectable amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They conducted their e-cigarette vapour research by having a volunteer smoke both a tobacco cigarette and an e-cigarette on separate occasions and each time exhale the smoke and vapour into a small chamber measuring 6ft cubed.

The team then measured the levels of toxins in the air immediately after the exhalations. While tobacco smoke scored high for the 20 VOCs that were tested for, e-cig vapour scored absolute zero for three quarters of the VOCs while only registering miniscule levels for five of them. Even then, the researchers noted that the levels of formaldehyde, for example, were actually very similar to the levels present in the air before the vapour was introduced.

Independent researchers have been studying the effects of vaping.

The Evidence is Clear

Even in that cramped environment which is hardly representative of the real world, e-cigarette vapour again proved itself to be unworthy of being associated with the same dangers that inhalation of secondary tobacco smoke cause. Apply these findings to a real world situation such as the large rooms of bars and clubs, and the evidence so far seems to not only suggest that passive vaping poses no danger at all, but that technically the dangers might not even exist.

Responsible Vaping

So not only is vaping better for you than smoking, it is better for the people around you too. However, as vapers we do have a responsibility to ensure that the image of vaping is protected and stays as clean as possible – particularly in the current political climate regarding the future of e-cigarettes – and we must always promote responsible use of e-cigs. Therefore, we at Vapourlites would still suggest that even though there is no proven risk connected to second hand vapour, you should still opt to vape somewhere out of sight of children (or easily influenced non-smokers) so that we don’t promote an unnecessary addiction to a new generation.