Vapes may cause cancer despite safer than smoking claim
A groundbreaking study has found that people who use e-cigarettes have a higher risk of cancer than non-users, casting doubt on whether the habit is safer than smoking.
Public health experts and scientists generally do not think e-cigarettes are safe, but early marketing efforts presented nicotine-based e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes that could supposedly help people quit smoking.
The review, conducted by the University of NSW and published on Tuesday, found that such e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung or mouth cancer.
People who use nicotine-based e-cigarettes have been found to have changes in their tissues that are indicative of cancer development, including DNA damage, oxidative stress and inflammation.
The researchers also examined case studies of oral cancer in e-cigarette users alone and looked at animal experiments, including one in which mice that inhaled aerosols from e-cigarettes developed lung cancer and had changes consistent with eventual cancer formation in the bladder.
“Objectively, and looking at all of the available literature, e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung cancer and oral cancer,” lead researcher Bernard Stewart told reporters.
“Not only are we concerned about the development of cancer, but we also can’t say for sure that these are safer than smoking.”
Electronic cigarettes can only be sold in Australian pharmacies to help people quit smoking or manage nicotine addiction.
However, the study also showed that smokers who switched to e-cigarettes did not necessarily quit smoking; This means they are stuck in a “dual-use limbo,” which means their risk of developing lung cancer increases fourfold.
Because e-cigarettes have only been available in Australia since 2008, it will take decades for scientists to collect enough long-term information from people who have only vaped to prove conclusively that e-cigarettes cause cancer.
But this study, by comparing the situation with early studies on smoking, has enough data for its authors to urge regulators to take action.
It took nearly a century for smoking to be officially recognized as a cause of lung cancer in 1964; even after reports from the 1860s showed links between tobacco and tuberculosis, emphysema, and more.
“E-cigarettes have only been around here for 20 years, we don’t need to wait 80 years to get an answer,” said co-author Freddy Sitas.
“We have a great opportunity to be proactive.”
Prof Sitas said large, national and state-wide studies needed to be funded to get early results on the potential for early-onset cancer among young Australians.
According to Prof Stewart, previous studies focused on comparing vaping to smoking rather than examining the effect of e-cigarettes in isolation, delaying progress in e-cigarette awareness.
“Coming from a ‘is this safer than smoking’ perspective is as crazy as saying we’re going to evaluate the safety of knives by whether they’re more or less dangerous than submachine guns,” he said.
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