I’m sure you’ve seen the breathless clickbaity headlines that have been making the rounds lately after a study showed that there is formaldehyde in a small amount of high voltage vapes:
“Before You Vape: High Levels of Formaldehyde Hidden in E-Cigs,” – NBC
“Can You Guess What Cancer-Causing Agent Researchers Just Found in Electronic Cigarettes?” – The Motley Fool
“E-Cigarettes Not Safer Than Ordinary Cigarettes,” – Tech Times
“E-Cigarettes Can Deliver A Big Dose Of Formaldehyde” – Columbus Dispatch
“Authors project higher cancer risk than smoking” – Tweet from the New England Journal of Medicine.
Anyone who has been taking the news at face value lately would be sure to quit vaping and go back to smoking. If vaping kills you too, why not?
Except that it doesn’t. According to the New York Times, David Peyton, one of the studies author’s is horrified by the way people are lying about his study:
“It is exceedingly frustrating to me that we are being associated with saying that e-cigarettes are more dangerous than cigarettes,” he added. “That is a fact not in evidence.”
It turns out that the study is full of more good news than bad. Only vaping at extremely high voltages produces formaldehyde. What the non-vaping media doesn’t understand is that nobody actually vapes at those voltage levels because it tastes like shit. The normal voltages that most people vape at? Formaldehyde free.
Shockingly, a third of the people who quit vaping and returned to smoking did so because they were worried about the health effects of vaping, according to Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
These shameless clickbait headlines are actually causing people to go back to smoking, despite all of the evidence that shows that smoking is deadly and all of the evidence that shows that vaping is a much better alternative. Unfortunately, these recent articles will embolden governments who want to ban or restrict vaping. The media should care a little bit less about their ad revenue and more about the people that could die from taking their articles seriously.