By David Kipkorir
The notion that e-cigarettes are healthier than regular ones might now be going up in smoke. A senior Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon, Prof. Peter Odhiambo has issued a warning to smokers over the risks of e-cigarettes.
In an interview in his office, Prof. Odhiambo told Health Business Magazine that e-cigarettes held plenty of nicotine and could cause the same nicotine-related heart problems as regular smokes.
The outgoing chairman of Tobacco Control Board at the Ministry of Health said e-cigarettes commonly known as vaporizers, are battery-powered devices that heat up a mixture of nicotine, a flavor and a liquid-usually propylene glycol or glycerol, a vapour for use to inhale.
Prof. Odhiambo confided that many of the health problems faced by traditional cigarette smokers persist with e-cigarettes due to devices’ nicotine content and other chemicals in the liquid.
He advised the smokers of e-cigarettes to stop the habit because there is no medical advice that encourage any form of smoking. The expert said stopping smoking cigarettes or e-cigarettes immediately drops the risk for heart attack.
Odhiambo said increased heart attack risk for e-cigarette use, in addition to the risks of any smoking, is particularly troubling, because most people who use e-cigarettes continue to smoke cigarettes.
He revealed that although e-cigs contain lower levels of carcinogens than regular cigarettes, they have high levels of “ultrafine particles and other toxins that have been linked to increased cardiovascular and non-cancer lung disease risks — which account for more than half of all smoking-caused deaths.
The big question Prof. Odhiambo wondered is whether people are talking about ‘electronic cigarettes’, or in effect, talking about ‘electronic nicotine’. Nicotine he said is both an irritant and a carcinogen.
“Tobacco smoke contains more than 4, 000 substances of which more than 50 are known to cause cancer”, explained the cardiologist. He said carbon monoxide in tobacco acts as an agent to impair oxygen transport. In this particular phase, he added the main toxic component is nicotine. “In any form, and in its different consumable processed and unprocessed forms, tobacco contains nicotine”, said Prof. Odhiambo.
He also challenged the notion that e-cigarettes are a useful cessation tool for individuals trying to quit smoking tobacco. “People argue that e-cigarettes could help smokers to quit, but I do not support this argument. If that was the case, e-cigarette use would have been most common among former smokers,” said the founder Chairman of Kenya Cardiac Society.
The cardiologist pointed out that in September 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that marketers should immediately remove any claims that e-cigs are a “safe and effective smoking cessation aid” because there is “no scientific evidence to confirm the product’s safety and efficacy.”
He urged the national government through the Ministry of Health to immediately ban the smoking of e-cigarettes like they did for shisha smoking recently. Prof. Odhiambo said since e-cigarette smoke is flavoured, it can be easily adulterated with cannabis and heroine.
Experts contacted by Health Business Magazine agree that while many studies point to different negative aspects of e-cigarette usage, the aggregate message is simple.
E-cigarettes just aren’t as safe as we might have thought. Furthermore, the experts also expressed concern with how e-cigarettes are marketed to young individuals, particularly through flavourings.
