Portland State Magazine Spring 2015

12 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2015 ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES have been clouded in controversy for years as their popularity has grown. By January of this year, 15 states and 275 municipalities throughout the United States had enacted laws restricting where they could be used. Forty-one states restrict their sale to minors. As of this writing, Oregon is considering legislation that would add it to the list. Most of the controversy centers around the fact that nobody seems to know the health dangers of “vaping,” the act of using an e-cigarette to inhale heat-generated, nicotine-laden vapor. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate e-cigarettes or the liquid extracts they use. Vaping advocates say it’s a safer alternative to smoking, and that it can help people get off cigarettes. But the World Health Organization in 2014 issued a report stating that there is not enough evi- dence to support that claim and called for stricter e-cigarette regulations. It seemed that all impressions of vaping—positive and negative—have been based on unknowns. At least that was the case until January, when Portland State chemistry faculty James Pankow, David Peyton and Rob Strongin released a study finding that levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde in e-cigarette vapor were up to 15 times higher than in a typical cigarette. They published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine , the news immediately went viral, and the researchers found themselves in the middle of a media firestorm. Governmental bodies, including Multnomah County, the State of Oregon, and municipalities throughout the United States cited their work as a reason why vaping should be restricted in public places and kept away from children. It seemed that, finally, there was hard evidence that e-cigarettes could be dangerous. Then came comments from the other side, claiming that the PSU research didn’t reflect the real world of vaping. Critics said the tests showing high formaldehyde levels were done at extreme voltages that the typical “vaper” would never use. New York Times columnist Joe Nocera cited other studies showing that such e-cigarettes had a taste so horrible that people simply could not inhale. Nocera pointed out that in 2010, 84 percent of current cigarette smokers thought e-cigarettes were a safer alternative, but that number had dropped to 65 percent by 2013. He hinted that the PSU study could drag that number still lower, saying that the study served as a “scare tactic to keep smokers away from e-cigarettes.” WR I T T E N B Y J OHN K I RK LAND PSU researchers get the world’s attention by linking vaping with formaldehyde