I'm skeptical. The same claims were made about vaping before disposables were even a thing and it always turned out they were abusing the device somehow, deliberately overheating it or dry hitting. I'm sure there are a ton of random chemicals in disposables just doubtful that heavy metals are a problem. Avoid them cause they're wasteful.

[–] stink@lemmygrad.ml 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Research here

They analyzed the vape juice themselves as well as doing a simulation of 100-500 puffs into some sort of wool.

Even in "virgin" e-liquid, there were still significant amounts of heavy metals in them, indicating that heavy metals from the coils and battery connectors were being absorbed by the e-liquids without any puffing needing to take place.

The big heavy box mods had less heavy metals in them after puffing, so did Juul devices (which use ceramic coils).

This is all speculation on my part, but I'm assuming that the main issue is these disposable devices sit on shelves for an unknown amount of time.

Due to this, I'm assuming that because the e-juices are in direct contact with the heating elements while they sit on shelves for months on end allows for more absorption of heavy metals into the e-juices.

[–] dualmindblade@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Holy shit, that's what I get for using a heuristic. Unless the results were faked this seems highly concerning. Relevant quite from the study:

Across all devices, virgin e-liquids exhibited relatively low concentrations of the primary elements observed in the heating coils, including Cr (3 to 20 μg/kg) and Fe (148 to 1090 μg/kg) (Table S2). Across ELF Bar and Flum Pebble virgin e-liquids, Ni was similarly low to Cr and Fe (14 to 29 μg/kg; Table S2). Unexpectedly, elements that are not present in heating coils (Table S1), including Pb, Cu, Zn, and Sb, were observed at excessive concentrations in Esco Bar device virgin e-liquids, with the exception of Ni which was elevated in virgin e-liquids relative to ELF Bar and Flum Pebble virgin e-liquids and present in coils (Figure 1). Esco Bar Flavored and Clear virgin e-liquids showed extremely high concentrations of Pb (64,000 to 127,000 μg/kg), Ni (13,000 to 38,400 μg/kg), Cu (344,000 to 533,000 μg/kg), and Zn (240,000 to 376,000 μg/kg) (Table S2). For context, concentrations of Pb, Ni, Cu, and Zn were universally and comparatively low in all other virgin e-liquids from Elf Bar or Flum Pebble devices, at ≤15, ≤29, ≤24, and ≤331 μg/kg, respectively, with the exception of Zn in the ELF Bar Flavored virgin e-liquid at 4420 μg/kg (Table S2).

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm still a bit like ok, so how does it compares to cigarettes? I know a lot of people who quit cigarettes using vapes

[–] dualmindblade@hexbear.net 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

A vape with a borderline dangerous amount of lead in the liquid might still be superior to cigarettes from a health standpoint, but why risk it when you can just use a regular non disposable one with coils and juice from reputable brands?

[–] hankthetankie@hexbear.net 1 points 11 hours ago

Agree , i used my own when I vaped to quit tobacco. Thing was it mentioned the coils , which I assume is cheaper stuff in disposable vapes.

[–] trinicorn@hexbear.net 3 points 21 hours ago

Yeah, that's the thing. This dogshit headline says "more toxic than cigarettes" but that's simply not what the study looked at, it looked at specifically heavy metal exposures, which are not the primary things that make smoking cigarettes bad for you.