Switch to e-cigs to save your life

A new study has confirmed that smokers can significantly reduce their exposure to toxins and carcinogens by switching to electronic cigarettes, according to a story by Jacob Sullum for Reason.com.

“They are safer,” the lead author, Maciej Goniewicz, a toxicologist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, US, was quoted as having told Buffalo Business First.

This was the first time, he added, that there was “very strong evidence” for telling smokers that substituting their tobacco cigarettes with electronic cigarettes would save their lives.

The study, reported last week in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, involved 20 Polish smokers who were encouraged to replace their cigarettes with the M201, a pen-style vaping system popular in Poland.

Each week during the two-week experiment, the researchers supplied the subjects with 20 tobacco-flavored cartridges, each containing 11 mg of nicotine in a solution of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin.

Goniewicz and his colleagues used questionnaires and urine tests to assess the subjects at the beginning of the study, after a week, and after two weeks.

Nine of the subjects stopped smoking completely, while the rest cut back, from an average of 16 cigarettes a day at the beginning of the study to an average of just one a day at the end. Based on tests for seven nicotine metabolites, the researchers found that nicotine intake stayed the same, while exposure to tobacco-related toxins and carcinogens fell. They measured biomarkers for 13 toxins and carcinogens; and all but a few declined substantially after the smokers started using electronic cigarettes.

The full story is at: http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/22/experiment-confirms-lifesaving-potential