E-cigarettes under continued scrutiny

Seems that inhaling vapours might be better for you than inhaling tobacco smoke, but is still something that is hardly going to be healthy for you:

Some e-cigarette ingredients are surprisingly more toxic than others

A new study by UNC School of Medicine researchers shows that e-liquids are far from harmless and contain ingredients that can vary wildly from one type of e-cigarette to another.

"We found that e-liquid ingredients are extremely diverse, and some of them are more toxic than nicotine alone and more toxic than just the standard base ingredients in e-cigarettes - propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin," said study senior author Robert Tarran, PhD, associate professor of cell biology and physiology. "The FDA, which helped fund our study, is just beginning to regulate e-liquid ingredients, and we hope that our data will inform their efforts."....

E-liquid's main ingredients of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin have been considered non-toxic when delivered orally, but of course e-cigarette vapors are inhaled. The UNC scientists found that even in the absence of nicotine or flavorings, small doses of these two organic compounds significantly reduced the growth of the test cells.

Again, I have to control my sense of schadenfreude  over the way at least some liberation aligned folk have rushed to endorse (or use) this product well ahead of proper testing and regulation, perhaps at the cost to their health.