A study reveals the toxicity of flavored e-cigarettes

Chemicals in flavored e-cigarettes can be highly toxic when heated, a new study has found.

The researchers found that 505 dangerous chemicals, including 127 that are highly toxic and 153 that pose a health risk, are formed as a result of smoking e-cigarettes.

The team used artificial intelligence to simulate the effects of thermochemicals found in 180 flavors of e-cigarettes, which may help detect the long-term health risks of vaping before clinical disease appears in the general population.

The study explained that the original source of e-cigarette flavors comes from the food industry, where they are safe, but heating them to high temperatures and inhaling them is harmful to health.

“Aerosols from e-cigarette smoking contain a highly complex and uncharacterized mixture of pyrolysis products, which have not been identified,” wrote the study’s authors, Donal O’Shea and Dan Wu, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Akihiro Kishimoto, of the IBM Research Center in Japan. "Health Effects Yet Before the health effects of vaping become clear among the general population, AI can be exploited to provide guidance to people, policymakers, and healthcare professionals."

Jacob George, professor of cardiovascular medicine and therapeutics at the University of Dundee, who was not involved in the study, said: “There are about 40,000 different flavors on the market around the world, and understanding their effects will require a range of techniques including automated mapping algorithms and the creation of neural networks.”

He added: “This study combined artificial intelligence with previously known published information to predict that when a group of chemicals in flavored e-cigarettes are heated, this may lead to the production of a toxic and harmful substance, and these predictions can then be tested through further studies.

There is not even "There is now very little good evidence on the safety or harm of these flavors, so I welcome the new strategies that researchers are using."

The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports.