Professor Glantz, Professor
Professor Glantz, Professor Siegel has responded to your e-cig nicotine inhaler comparison in part as follows. I'd be very much interested in hearing your response. Please see his blog for his full response. Thanks.
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The analysis is essentially comparing the amount of these chemicals produced by one cartridge of an electronic cigarette versus one cartridge of a nicotine
inhaler.
Sound like a fair comparison? Comparing apples to apples?
Well, no.
While 150 puffs is the approximate dose of vapor that an electronic cigarette user inhales per day (about one cartridge - depending on the brand), a typical nicotine inhaler user will go through about 16 cartridges per day. Obviously, these figures vary depending on the individual, but it is not unreasonable to assume that a typical vaper would take 150 puffs per day, while a nicotine inhaler user might use 16 cartridges per day.
Since what we are interested in is the difference in toxicant exposure, we must take the number of cartridges used per day into our analysis. What we want to estimate and compare is the total daily exposure to these various chemicals.
So here is Dr. Glantz's table reproduced correctly to represent a comparison of daily carcinogen intake rather than intake from one cartridge:
ecig inhaler ratio
Formaldehyde 28.2 32.0 0.9
Acetaldehyde 7.4 17.6 0.4
Acrolein 11.5 ND
o-methylbenzyne 3.9 11.2 0.3
Toluene 0.8 ND
p,m-xylene 0.1 ND
NNN 1.5 ND
NNK 6.6 ND
Cadmium 0.09 0.48 0.2
Nickel 0.19 3.0 0.1
Lead 0.09 0.64 0.1
ND=not detected
You can see that in contrast to what Dr. Glantz reported, the estimated daily exposure to six carcinogens is substantially higher for use of a nicotine inhaler compared to use of electronic cigarettes, based on the very same data that he believes is valid. As you can see, this changes the conclusion quite a bit.