Tag Archives: nicotine

EVALI

There is a good summary of the story at The Verge while medical journals seem to be slow with updates ( there will be a Twitter session today at 4 p.m. ET using the hashtag #ATSChat )

In the United States, regulatory and public health agencies are looking into these three different public health-related problems: exploding e-cigarettes, seizures and lung injuries.

Lung injury  is the biggest problem

During a press call on October 25th, Schuchat [principal deputy director of the CDC] said that they were now calling the injury EVALI, an acronym for “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury.” It’s still not particularly catchy, but slightly better than the longer version.

As of October 22, 2019 1,604 cases have been reported according to the CDC. I wonder whether 1,2-propandiole and glycerole are responsible for the effect? Heating may lead to formaldehyde and acrolein (an unsaturated aldehyde). But why is the combination with THC so deleterious? Further chemical reactions?