From the moment I learned the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I longed for the strength and certainty of steel.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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chapotraphouse
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vape is back in the news, new covid about to drop. somebody figure out what the new fort detrick will be
The "new" COVID has already been in the news for weeks, it's the strain NB 1.8.1 which is just starting to arrive in the US. The "Fort Detrick" in this situation is every household in the entire world because only 1% or less of people are still taking COVID precautions.
\m/ because heavy metals rock
That’s sick
Cobalt is an amazing band! Missed opportunity to not use their (admittedly generic) logo though
disposable electronics
Death to the west
Gotta give the population lead poisoning somehow
God forbid we have a generation that hasn't killed off its empathy with frontal lobe damage from heavy metal poisoning
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.
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.
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).
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
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?
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.
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.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but also wouldn’t be surprised if the study was funded by tobacco companies lol
The tobacco companies have almost certainly done countless studies of this already but kept them all private. If this is linked to any of them it'll be one study in their favour among a hundred that they've done showing the opposite. They did hundreds of studies of the tobacco cancer link and kept those to themselves.
What do you mean? I consume heavy metal, death metal, thrash metal all the time. *looks at thread * not that kinda metal 
So is it just vaping in general or only disposables?
Looks like the study might have just focused on disposables.
Those should be banned based on their waste alone
On an article I saw recently apparently a lot of people don't even know they have a battery in them!! I don't mean to sound elitist but the ignorance I've heard lately seriously baffles me.
LMAO, they think that shit works with magic?
there's probably a way to make one chemically but good luck turning that back off without it costing more than electronics.
Brb reinventing a cigarette
A lot of people drink from lead pipes.
A lot more need to be hit over the head with one
Hm okay. I've often thought if I'm gonna keep vaping I should invest in a rig with juice and stuff, much more economical and less wasteful (not to mention it won't kill me).
I scanned through various reporting for the same question. They tested 3 brands of cheap disposable vape (article cites there being something like 100 brands of disposable vape on the market). Pretty sure these are all-in-one units; I don't even think they have pod cartridges—so you use it and throw the whole thing out, batteries and hardware included. So they would have incentive to be the cheapest components possible and to cut corners. There’s a line in one of the articles that said something like they have worse chemicals than cigarettes which are worse than refillable vapes, suggesting these are bad, cigarettes bad, refillable less bad to some undefined degree. While they mention the vape liquid as a cause a little bit, a lot of the bad stuff seems to be coming off the hardware with heat—so like leaded wires and atomizers with bad metals on or near them.
All that to say that as per usual reporting tries to lump all vaping into this one mysterious bad category (thinking here about how that stuff with off-market internet THC vapes was used to support headlines like “vaping destroying lungs of zoomers overnight”). I doubt vaping is safe, but even so I would prefer clear and transparent info about it, and often it seems like there’s just a policy decision/agenda-driven bent to a lot of the reporting.
My guess is that if you get a larger system with better quality parts, it’s going to be safer generally than smaller/and more disposable oriented stuff.
My guess is that if you get a larger system with better quality parts, it’s going to be safer generally than smaller/and more disposable oriented stuff.
I'm a former smoker, vaping for the last ten years on rebuildable tanks with box mods. I had been smoking cigarettes for about ten years before I made the switch. Anecdotally, I can say that my vapes feel way way way less harmful than cigarettes.
I will not touch a disposable vape, and I think they are absolutely a harmful product. This study shows that it's harmful for your body, but I didn't need to know this problem in order to identify that casually throwing away a device with a battery in it is a big no-no. Disposable vapes are incredibly wasteful products.
can say that my vapes feel way way way less harmful than cigarettes.
This might not have any connection to the actually safety though, it could be the tobacco smoke is harsher on the lungs so you feel it but the vape could contain more heavy metals that your lungs/throat don't detect.
But I think you're right, from what I've heard the higher quality vapes don't have the issue with leaching metals from the heating element.
That's true. Still, I feel just fine after all these years, and my lung capacity is way better than it used to be when I smoked cigs. That's not to say that it's perfectly safe, absolutely nobody should ever start vaping unless it's for harm reduction.
(thinking here about how that stuff with off-market internet THC vapes was used to support headlines like “vaping destroying lungs of zoomers overnight”)
Also ngl I still kinda think the actual cause for that was the coronavirus spreading in the United States months before it was discovered
My guess is that if you get a larger system with better quality parts, it’s going to be safer generally than smaller/and more disposable oriented stuff.
Thanks for the breakdown.
I can also confirm this. You can get part kits and make your own rig as well if you're decent with soldering and have some know-how. Otherwise, lots of decent mods out there.
If disposable vapes are made of recycled plastic then that’s another red flag. Recycled plastic is often of dubious origin. Lots of random dangerous waste gets mixed in with the plastic, such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and of course heavy metals.
I commented this above but for visibility
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.
I mostly take edibles or the occasional bong hit nowadays with friends.
The children yearn for the mines
Isn't imbibing vials of metal how people do magic in Mistborne? Maybe that's what's up.
Nah vapes are for children. Adults should smoke.
People should do neither, unless it makes you look really cool.
If you're vaping thc or smoking weed, I highly recommend getting a dry flower vape. Absolutely worth it and it'll pay for itself eventually.
Is it the weed equivalent of that IQOS shit they peddle everywhere in Poland for cigs?
IQOS
Never heard of this particular brand. Banned in the US for infringing on a different monopoly's patent (lol) and doesn't seem popular in Canada. It looks like a conduction vaporizer, heating through direct physical contact.
Convection vaporizers instead heat the air instead of the material, so it will actually stop heating the plant material when you're not actively pulling heated air through it. They also more consistently heat all the material inside.
I don't really have any firsthand (or secondhand) experience with anything tobacco related, so I can't really say how this stuff compares practically or how relevant any of it is to tobacco use.
Some residual lizard-brain instinct fills us with a quiet anxiety that we have too many neurons for our own good.
My family were coal miners and I inherited their death drive lol nah this is a good reason to quit as any of the myriad of others; that’s the goal at least
😋