Hold your breath. In 2011, there were seven million e-cigarette users worldwide. The latest research by the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction noted that the number of vapers worldwide increased by 20 per cent from 2020 to 2021. There are now 82 million vapers worldwide. What’s in a vape that makes it so addictive?
How it works: The battery inside each vape is attached to an atomiser head, which is a metal coil connected to a sensor. The battery is padded with cotton so that it doesn’t move around. When you draw in from the vape, the sensor activates the coil inserted into the pod filled with the liquid. The smoke contains vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol in different quantities.
The more the vegetable glycerine, the bigger the cloud. A study says inhaling both causes lung inflammation. Besides these two culprits, the vape aerosol has possibly harmful artificial flavours and aldehydes, which are even worse. The consequences of long-term vaping are yet to be investigated.
Flavourings and Coolants:
Each flavour has a distinct chemical compound. Depending on what flavour, one may contain many compounds, it takes eight distinct chemical compounds to create the Kiwi flavour. The intensity of the smoke is dependent on how many and how much flavour compound is added to the vape.
Many of these flavours are used in other consumables, but no data is available on what happens when you inhale them. All vapes have coolants, and chemicals added to prevent the throat from responding to high nicotine content in the vape. Though coolants like flavours are used in foods and medicines, they are
not for inhalation.
Nasty Nicotine:
All flavours have the same nicotine concentration. To calculate the quantity of nicotine in each vape, multiply the total amount in mg/ml by the number of millilitres in the tank. For example, if you fill up a 5 ml vape tank with 6 mg/ml e-liquid, you have 5 ml × 6 mg/ml which equals 30 mg of nicotine.
The IGet XXL has 305.1 mg of nicotine, the IGet King 332.6 mg of nicotine and the Gunpod has 357.7
mg on a full tank.
Meanwhile, the average amount of nicotine in a single cigarette is around 12 mg. The average nicotine inhaled is about 1.1-1.8 mg per smoke. Hence, a 20 cigarette pack will yield a hit of 22 to 36 mg of nicotine. Calculating that one cigarette contains 12 mg of nicotine, vaping a full Gunpod is equal to smoking 30 cigarettes.