electronic cigarette – Oral Cancer News

E-cigarettes ‘just as harmful as tobacco’ for oral health

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com Author: Honor Whiteman Electronic cigarettes are often marketed as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes. When it comes to oral health, however, new research suggests vaping may be just as harmful as smoking. Researchers suggest vaping may be equally - if not more - harmful for oral health than smoking. In a study published in the journal Oncotarget, researchers found that the chemicals present in electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) vapor were equally as damaging - in some cases, more damaging - to mouth cells as tobacco smoke. Such damage can lead to an array of oral health problems, including gum disease, tooth loss, and mouth cancer. E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices containing a heating device and a cartridge that holds a liquid solution. The heating device vaporizes the liquid - usually when the user "puffs" on the device - and the resulting vapor is inhaled. While e-cigarette liquids do not contain tobacco - a highly harmful component of conventional cigarettes - they do contain nicotine and other chemicals, including flavoring agents. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the use of e-cigarettes has increased in recent years, particularly among young people. In 2015, 16 percent of high-school students reported using the devices, compared with just 1.5 percent in 2011. E-cigarettes are considered by many to be safer than conventional smoking, but because the devices are relatively new to the market, little is known about the long-term effects of vaping on health. In particular, study leader [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-11-18T07:33:06-07:00November, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

E-cigarette laws may be harder to regulate than originally thought

Source: apnews.com or ap.orgAuthor: Summer Ballentine & Michael Felberbaum JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - In a rush to keep electronic cigarettes out of children's hands while the federal government creeps forward with a proposed national ban for minors, experts say that many states are passing laws that could mean fewer restrictions on the nicotine devices later. Lawmakers last month made Missouri the 41st state to outlaw selling e-cigarettes to minors. Age restrictions have wide support, but Gov. Jay Nixon and public health advocates opposed a piece of the legislation that prevents tobacco taxes or regulations from being imposed on the electronic devices, which heat liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor. E-cigarette makers have been in a tug-of-war with state and federal governments since the battery-powered devices first were sold in the U.S. in 2007. A 2009 law gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate a number of aspects of tobacco marketing and manufacturing. It first said it planned to assert authority over e-cigarettes in 2011, but it hasn't yet done so. In April, the FDA for the first time proposed a set of regulations for e-cigarettes, including banning sales to minors and requiring health warning labels, as well as approving new products. The agency has said its proposal sets a foundation for regulating the products but the rules wouldn't immediately ban the wide array of flavors of e-cigarettes or curb marketing on places like TV. In the absence of regulation, members of Congress, state leaders and public [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-10-07T13:01:37-07:00October, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

E-Cigarettes fail to help cancer patients quit smoking

Source: www.cancernetwork.com Author: Anna Azvolinsky, PhD Among cancer patients who smoke, electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) users had greater nicotine dependence compared with traditional cigarette smokers, and e-cigarettes did not help patients quit smoking, according to the results of a study published in Cancer. E-cigarettes have been touted as possible tools for smoking cessation. According to the study authors, these are the first published results on e-cigarette use and smoking cessation among cancer patients and put into question the potential benefits of using e-cigarettes as part of a smoking cessation program for cancer patients. Those diagnosed with cancer who continue to smoke are advised to quit. The uptick in the use of e-cigarettes has raised the question of whether these newer types of cigarettes can facilitate or hamper the ability to quit smoking for good. In the new study, Jamie Ostroff, PhD, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, examined 1,074 cancer patients who smoked and were enrolled in a tobacco treatment program between 2012 and 2013 at the cancer center. Using a complete case analysis, e-cigarette users were equally likely to still smoke as those who did not use e-cigarettes (odds ratio of 1). Using an intention-to-treat analysis, e-cigarette users were twice as likely to be smoking at the time of follow-up (odds ratio = 2, P < .01). The 7-day abstinence from smoking was 44.4% for e-cigarette users compared with 43.1% for non-users. Patients who were e-cigarette users at study enrollment were likely to be [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-09-24T07:08:11-07:00September, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Top cancer organizations push for FDA to regulate all tobacco products

Source: medicalexpress.comAuthor: Staff The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), in a joint letter responding to a proposal by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to extend its regulatory authority over tobacco products, today urged the agency to regulate electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), cigars, and all other tobacco products and to strengthen the proposed regulations for newly deemed products. "There is no safe form of tobacco use," said Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), chief executive officer of the AACR. "Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States, and among its dire health consequences are 18 different types of cancer. It is imperative that the FDA takes action to regulate all tobacco products. The future health of the American people, in particular our nation's children, depends on it." The AACR and ASCO applauded the FDA's proposal to regulate e-cigarettes. "We believe it is vitally important for the FDA to begin regulating these products, especially because we don't know much about the health effects of e-cigarette use. We are also quite concerned that e-cigarettes may increase the likelihood that nonsmokers or former smokers will use combustible tobacco products or that they will discourage smokers from quitting," said Peter P. Yu, MD, FASCO, president of ASCO. "There are insufficient data on the long-term health consequences of e-cigarettes, their value as tobacco cessation aids, or their effects on the use of conventional cigarettes. Any benefits of e-cigarettes are most likely to be realized [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-08-13T09:48:45-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

FDA proposes rules to disclose e-cigarette ingredient information and ban sales to children

Source: usatoday.comAuthor: Wendy Koch As electronic cigarettes soar in popularity, the U.S. government Thursday is proposing historic rules to ban their sale to minors and require warning labels as well as federal approval. Three years after saying it would regulate e-cigarettes, the Food and Drug Administration is moving to control not only these battery-powered devices but also cigars, pipe tobacco, hookahs (water pipes) and dissolvable tobacco products. Currently, the FDA regulates cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless products such as snuff. The proposed rules won't ban advertising unless the products make health-related claims nor will they ban the use of flavors such as chocolate or bubble gum, which public health officials say might attract children. "This is an important moment for consumer protection," said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting tobacco remains "the leading cause of death and disease in this country." The rules will require manufacturers to report their ingredients to the FDA and obtain its approval. They also ban free tobacco samples and most vending-machine sales. "Some of these regulations will be very restrictive," said Ray Story, founder of industry group TVECA (Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association), who added he obtained his own pre-release copy of the rules. He said they could be costly for smaller businesses and slow the growth of a product that advocates say has helped many smokers kick the habit. Still, Story said, consumers might benefit, because "it provides them a product that will be consistent." E-cigarettes contain varying ingredients and levels of nicotine that are [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-04-24T15:19:30-07:00April, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Liquid nicotine for E-cigarettes found to be extremely toxic

Source: nytimes.comAuthor: Matt Richtel A dangerous new form of a powerful stimulant is hitting markets nationwide, for sale by the vial, the gallon and even the barrel. The drug is nicotine, in its potent, liquid form — extracted from tobacco and tinctured with a cocktail of flavorings, colorings and assorted chemicals to feed the fast-growing electronic cigarette industry. These “e-liquids,” the key ingredients in e-cigarettes, are powerful neurotoxins. Tiny amounts, whether ingested or absorbed through the skin, can cause vomiting and seizures and even be lethal. A teaspoon of even highly diluted e-liquid can kill a small child. But, like e-cigarettes, e-liquids are not regulated by federal authorities. They are mixed on factory floors and in the back rooms of shops, and sold legally in stores and online in small bottles that are kept casually around the house for regular refilling of e-cigarettes. Evidence of the potential dangers is already emerging. Toxicologists warn that e-liquids pose a significant risk to public health, particularly to children, who may be drawn to their bright colors and fragrant flavorings like cherry, chocolate and bubble gum. “It’s not a matter of if a child will be seriously poisoned or killed,” said Lee Cantrell, director of the San Diego division of the California Poison Control System and a professor of pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s a matter of when.” Reports of accidental poisonings, notably among children, are soaring. Since 2011, there appears to have been one death in the United States, a [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-04-07T12:06:53-07:00April, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

More evidence presented that the increasingly popular e-cigarettes are harmful

Source: www.examiner.com Author: W. Mark Dendy A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Athens in Greece and presented at the European Respiratory Society’s Annual Congress in Vienna in September 2012 sheds some new light on the risks of the electronic cigarette. The study was a phase I clinical trial in which 32 participants each smoked a single e-cigarette for 10 minutes and had their airway resistance measured using a number of different respiratory tests before and immediately afterward. Respiratory tests carried out by the researchers included: • spirometry (a test looking at various measures of lung function) • static lung volume • airway resistance (the obstruction of the airways to airflow) • airway conductance (a measure related to airway resistance) • single breath nitrogen test (a measure of how adequate inspiration and expiration is) According to one of the researchers, Professor Christine Gratziou, the main finding of the study was that after smoking one e-cigarette for 10 minutes there was “an immediate rise in airway resistance in our group of participants, which suggests e-cigarettes can cause immediate harm after smoking the device”. Gratziou added that “more research is needed to understand whether this harm also has lasting effects in the long-term”. The airway resistance lasted for longer than 10 minutes in all of the 32 people, suggesting that air was not passing so easily through their airways. In a study presented back in April 2012, a chemical known as (S)-N’-nitrosonornicotine, or (S)-NNN, which is present in smokeless [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-09-06T19:39:08-07:00September, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

“Through With Chew 2012”

Source: LeaderAdvisor.com “Through With Chew 2012” is designed to raise awareness about the variety of new smokeless tobacco products (SLT), dangerous especially to young people, not only because the amount of nicotine absorbed from these products is substantially higher than the amount absorbed from a cigarette, but also because of the aggressive marketing of these new products by the tobacco companies. Some of the latest tobacco industry innovations include tobacco dispensed in oral pouches, dissolvable tobacco (orbs) and the electronic cigarette. Aggressive marketing includes the fact that the five largest tobacco manufacturers spent $547.9 million on SLT advertising and promotions in 2008, up from the previous year by 34 percent (www.cdc.gov). A goal of the education campaign this year is to educate parents, teachers, administrators and coaches about these new products, that the packaging often resembles candy packaging, and that they are actually tobacco-containing products. Tobacco industry documents themselves indicate that SLT products are aggressively marketed toward youth, and that the industry has a strategy to progressively move youth from candy or fruit flavored products to more robust varieties for the nicotine dependent user (www.tobaccofreekids.org). Because so many people die per year due to tobacco-related illness, the tobacco companies need to find replacement users for their products. Tobacco use, no matter what form, remains the leading cause of death in this country annually. Just as in cigarettes, the leading cancer-causing agents in SLT are the tobacco-specific nitrosamines, which are formed during the growing, curing, fermenting and aging of tobacco leaves. [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-02-15T10:49:15-07:00February, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

E-Cigarette Controversy

Source: The New York Times If you want a truly frustrating job in public health, try getting people to stop smoking. Even when researchers combine counseling and encouragement with nicotine patches and gum, few smokers quit. Recently, though, experimenters in Italy had more success by doing less. A team led by Riccardo Polosa of the University of Catania recruited 40 hard-core smokers — ones who had turned down a free spot in a smoking-cessation program — and simply gave them a gadget already available in stores for $50. This electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette, contains a small reservoir of liquid nicotine solution that is vaporized to form an aerosol mist. The user “vapes,” or puffs on the vapor, to get a hit of the addictive nicotine (and the familiar sensation of bringing a cigarette to one’s mouth) without the noxious substances found in cigarette smoke. After six months, more than half the subjects in Dr. Polosa’s experiment had cut their regular cigarette consumption by at least 50 percent. Nearly a quarter had stopped altogether. Though this was just a small pilot study, the results fit with other encouraging evidence and bolster hopes that these e-cigarettes could be the most effective tool yet for reducing the global death toll from smoking. But there’s a powerful group working against this innovation — and it’s not Big Tobacco. It’s a coalition of government officials and antismoking groups who have been warning about the dangers of e-cigarettes and trying to ban their sale. The controversy [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-11-08T13:22:07-07:00November, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Popularity surges for e-cigarettes, but health questions unanswered

Source: ArgusLeader.com Misti Stewart of Gregor's Eastside Liquor demonstrates an electronic cigarette. They have gained popularity since the smoking ban. / Elisha Page / Argus Leader Jeff Mann has found a way to get his nicotine fix with no ash, no flame, no odor and no bad breath. And he can do it legally inside businesses that are smoke free. Mann, 40, smokes an electronic cigarette. It's a battery-powered device that looks like a cigarette and emits cigarette-like smoke, but delivers nicotine in vapor form. "You can get a nicotine level that you're used to getting from a regular cigarette," Mann said. E-cigarettes have been available in the United States since 2006 and have grown in popularity in Sioux Falls since the smoking ban went into effect Nov. 10. They're sold in bars, casinos and various retail shops. At least one local distributor has seen a 50 percent increase in sales. But the federal Food and Drug Administration has not approved e-cigarettes. That raises red flags for some health professionals and has them questioning what risks might be associated with e-cigarettes. Smoker says device helped him cut back The FDA lost a court case last year after trying to treat e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices instead of tobacco products because e-cigarettes heat nicotine extracted from tobacco. But Mann, who owns Vishnu Bunny Tattoo and Piercing, views e-cigarettes as a healthier alternative to the traditional cigarettes he has smoked for 25 years. He said it has helped him cut down on smoking. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-02-22T11:36:28-07:00February, 2011|Oral Cancer News|