Holy smoke! Sale of tobacco products to kids continue unchecked

  

The sale of tobacco products to those under the age of 18 continues to burgeon in blatant disregard of the law making this illegal. Every vendor has the board put up claiming that sale to underage children is prohibited. However, the biggest customers for tobacco products remains school and college students!

The once in a blue moon raids carried out by excise sleuths or police results in big loads of pan and other products being confiscated. However, there is seldom any action other than detaining the peddlers and slapping them with a fine. Often there aren't any probe into the source and the channels of smuggling these products.

The punishment for transporting or selling tobacco products is only a fine, a mere slap on the wrist which enables those caught to continue doing the same things. Most of the people caught in such instances under police record are repeat offenders. These days, on top of tobacco products, even intoxicating sweets are being sold in shops near schools.

Earlier, routine health department checks used to take place under schemes like Healthy Kerala. This kept a check on the sale of such products. However, new steps taken by the health department, decreasing the regularity of checks has contributed to the upsurge in sales of these products.

In spite of the fact that parent bodies, teachers associations and school managements are all increasing their roles, in many cases, nobody comes forward to give an official complaint. The need of the hour is to stop letting off those involved with mere fines and instead trace out the source of the problem and bring them to public light.

Courtesy: Manoramaonline

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E-cigarette vapours laden with toxic metals, say experts

It has come to light that e-cigarette vapours contain a significant amount of toxic metals, which can be dangerous.

According to a study conducted by at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, significant amounts of toxic metals, including lead, leak from some e-cigarette heating coils and are present in the aerosols inhaled by users.

 In the study, the scientists examined e-cigarette devices owned by a sample of 56 users. They found that significant numbers of the devices generated aerosols with potentially unsafe levels of lead, chromium, manganese and/or nickel.

Chronic inhalation of these metals has been linked to lung, liver, immune, cardiovascular and brain damage, and even cancers.

"It's important for the FDA, the e-cigarette companies, and vapers themselves to know that these heating coils, as currently made, seem to be leaking toxic metals--which then get into the aerosols that vapers inhale," said senior author, Ana María Rule.

Vaping, the practice of inhaling this aerosol as if it were cigarette smoke, is now popular especially among teens, young adults and former smokers.

Vaping is popular in part because it provides the nicotine "hit" and the look and feel of tobacco-smoking but without smoking's extreme health risks. Evidence that vaping isn't entirely safe continues to accumulate, however.

For the new study, Rule and her colleagues, including lead author Pablo Olmedo, recruited 56 daily e-cigarette users from vaping conventions and e-cigarette shops around Baltimore during the fall of 2015.

Working with participants' devices, which they brought to the researchers' lab at the Bloomberg School, the scientists tested for the presence of 15 metals in the e-liquids in the vapers' refilling dispensers, the e-liquids in their coil-containing e-cigarette tanks and in the generated aerosols.

Consistent with prior studies, they found minimal amounts of metals in the e-liquids within refilling dispensers, but much larger amounts of some metals in the e-liquids that had been exposed to the heating coils within e-cigarette tanks.

The difference indicated that the metals almost certainly had come from the coils. Most importantly, the scientists showed that the metal contamination carried over to the aerosols produced by heating the e-liquids.

Of the metals significantly present in the aerosols, lead, chromium, nickel and manganese were the ones of most concern, as all are toxic when inhaled.

Almost 50 per cent of aerosol samples had lead concentrations higher than health-based limits defined by the Environmental Protection Agency. Similarly, median aerosol concentrations of nickel, chromium and manganese approached or exceeded safe limits.

"These were median levels only," Rule said. "The actual levels of these metals varied greatly from sample to sample, and often were much higher than safe limits".

E-cigarette heating coils typically are made of nickel, chromium and a few other elements, making them the most obvious sources of metal contamination, although the source of the lead remains a mystery.

Precisely how metals get from the coil into the surrounding e-liquid is another mystery. "We don't know yet whether metals are chemically leaching from the coil or vaporizing when it's heated," Rule said.

The researchers did observe, however, that aerosol metal concentrations tended to be higher for e-cigarettes with more frequently changed coils--suggesting that fresher coils give off metals more readily.

The researchers also detected significant levels of arsenic, a metal-like element that can be highly toxic, in refill e-liquid and in the corresponding tank e-liquid and aerosol samples from 10 of the 56 vapers. How the arsenic got into these e-liquids is yet another mystery--and another potential focus for regulators.

The findings from the study are published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Courtesy Deccan Chronicle

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Tobacco Increases The Risk Of Cancer No Matter How It Is Used: Study

A recent study conducted by JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that cigarettes were not the only type of tobacco products that can lead to premature death or fatalities from smoking-related cancers. There is only one difference – the people who exclusively smoke cigarettes have twice the risk of premature death. But people who use cigars or pipes are not safe either, according to the study. The research team was headed by Carol Christensen, member of U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products.

“Combustible tobacco used in any form is a cancer risk, and pipe and cigar smokers cannot be given a pass,” said Dr Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City to Medical Express.

The research tracked the health and habits of more than 3,57,000 US citizens from 1985 to 2011. Among the people who were selected for the research, 57% (2,03,071) never used tobacco. 5,7,251 participants were daily cigarette smokers. 531 participants were cigar smokers and 1099 participants had a daily habit of using pipes.

“Cigar smokers had a 20 percent elevated odds of death from any cause and a 61 percent higher risk of death from tobacco-linked cancer,” the research stated. Compared to the never smokers, pipe smokers had a 58% higher risk of dying from tobacco-linked cancer during the research period.

“A full-size cigar can contain chemicals the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes, and individuals who switch from cigarettes to cigars frequently unintentionally inhale cigars the way they inhaled cigarettes—exposing them to large amounts of the hazardous substances in cigar smoke,” said Patricia Folan who directs the Centre for Tobacco Control at Northwell Health in Great, New York.

Tobacco consumption in India

The findings in the study have relevance in the Indian context as the country stands as the second largest consumer and producer of tobacco globally. China tops the list. India also accounts for one-sixth of the world’s tobacco-related deaths. Tobacco is available in the country in wide varieties of smoke and smokeless forms. Tobacco consumption is highest in the states like Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, and Assam, according to the data published by the National Family Health Survey.

Source: The Logical Indian

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