Portland State Magazine Spring 2015

SPRING 2015 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 13 INSIDE THE LAB , chemist David Peyton says he is not out to change people’s habits. “I consider cars to be more evil than cigarettes, and certainly more than e-cigarettes,” he says. “I’m not on a crusade for either one. I just put out the data so the regulatory people can look at these things.” He says he was unprepared for the emotional backlash from the publicity surrounding the PSU study. The story of its findings was picked up by at least 179 news outlets on nearly every continent within 10 days of the New England Journal of Medicine article. That figure nearly doubled in the following weeks. “Various news articles took our study and said e-cigarettes are more dangerous than cigarettes. We never said that. But the story took legs, and before you know it people were talking about experiments we didn’t do and conclusions we didn’t make,” he says. THE WHOLE THING actually started when Pankow, whose recent work centered around the candy-like flavorings in tobacco, wanted to find out more about the chemistry of nicotine in vapor form. He teamed up with fellow chemists Peyton and Strongin to measure the presence of the various chemicals the vapor contained. They weren’t searching for formaldehyde per se, and were surprised when it showed up in tests at such high levels. “Our original intent was to look at the flavor molecules. The flavorings they put in tobacco products are deemed safe for eating, but there’s no assurance about inhaling. We wanted to see if they survived the vaping process, and we got sidetracked by the formaldehyde,” Peyton says. The team looked at one particular e-liquid, but there are hundreds. The e-cigarette they tested was a common model that a user could find in most stores selling vaping materials. E-cigarettes come in different forms, but all are based on the idea of heating liquid with a battery-powered coil to produce an aerosol that is inhaled. Some vaporizers have adjustable power controls so the user can increase or decrease the amount of vapor produced. The one the PSU team used in the lab was not adjustable, yet it produced formaldehyde. “The critics say whenever you inhale (at the levels where we found formaldehyde), you stop because it tastes bad,” Pankow says. “But that automatically means that you’re exposing your- self to those conditions. This level is a known phenomenon. “Also, it’s pretty well known that inhaling cigars is unpleas- ant, but people do it,” he says. SINCE THE STUDY came out, the PSU team, including student assistants Rob Jensen and Zahreh McClure, has been looking at a wider variety of e-cigarette types. They include “drippers” in which the user manually drops liquid onto the heating coil. Drippers produce a bigger vapor hit than other types, and consequently a higher level of formaldehyde than what the researchers found before. The researchers are preparing a follow-up article for the New England Journal of Medicine , which will be published this spring. Peyton said it will address some of the controversies and will show results from the new round of research. “We are going to fill in the blank between what we did in the original publication about high power vs. low power to show what happens in the middle,” he says. Author’s note: The PSU research on e-cigarettes was supported by grants from the Penrose Foundation and the Cooley Fund for Critical Research of the Oregon Community Foundation. It also received support from Regina M. and Michael J. Dowd and Patrick J. Coughlin.  John Kirkland is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications. Professors David Peyton (left) and Robert Strongin are part of a team that found e-cigarette vapor can contain 15 times higher levels of formaldehyde than regular cigarettes.