January 20, 2014
Wolfgang Schober and colleagues from the Bavarian Health and Safety Authority just published a nice study that measures indoor air pollution cased by e-cigarettes in a realistic environment in which they configured a room to be configured and ventilated like a cafe in which 3 people vaped e-cigarettes over a 2 hour period. They measure both air quality in the room as well as the presence of various chemicals in the people consuming the e-cigarettes.
In terms of air pollution, the found substantial increases in fine particles (mean of 197 mcgh/m3, compared to a mean of 6 mcg/m3 under control conditions when no one was vaping. They also found a 20% increase in carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
They also found increased measures of inflammatory processes in the people using e-cigarettes, which could indicate lung irritation. (Increase levels of inflammation could also have effects on blood and blood vessels in ways that increase the risk of triggering a heart attack.)
Here is the abstract of the paper:
January 20, 2014
Last week the Surgeon General released his 2014 report, which reiterated the conclusion that smoking in movies caused youth smoking and that rating movies R for smoking would reduce youth smoking by 18%.
The Surgeon General also concluded that state tobacco control programs were effective in reducing smoking, but that states were not spending anything near what the CDC was recommending on these programs.
We are running an ad in State Legislatures next month that brings these two themes together by making the point that seven states are now spending more subsidizing movies that promote smoking to kids than they are spending fighting smoking.
Here is the ad, which is also available at http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/ourads/ad_sfm96.htm:
January 20, 2014
In another Dilbert meets Kafka moment, the FDA, both directly and indirectly through NIH/NIDA, has been telling researches that they will are planning to require researchers to get an "Investigational New Drug" (IND) approval for any studies of e-cigarettes.
What this means is that, at the same time that the FDA is sitting quietly while e-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed, including with unsupported claims that they are effective smoking cessation aids (which allows, even in the current legal environment, to regulate them as drugs right now), and in the face of skyrocketing use by kids, the FDA is poised to throw up roadblocks to independent research on the effects of e-cigarettes.
Not only will this substantially slow down research, but it will limit the scope of what is studied. What we need is to understand the effects of e-cigarettes as used in the real world, not some highly stylized "research" e-cigarettes function.
January 16, 2014
I am in DC for the press conference where the report will be presented. Here are some quick reactions, based on the Executive Summary:
It highlights the importance of smoking in the movies as a cause of smoking and concludes that “Actions [i.e., R rating onscreen smoking] that would eliminate the depiction of tobacco use in movies, which are produces and rated as appropriate for children and adolescents, could have a significant effect on preventing youth from becoming tobacco users.”
January 12, 2014
Ken Johnson and I just published a paper, "The Surgeon General Report on Smoking and Health 50 Years Later: Breast Cancer and the Cost of Increasing Caution," in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention highlighting the fact that the evidence linking both active and passive smoking continues to pile up.
Here is the abstract: