As health organizations — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , the Food and Drug Administration , and state health departments — investigate possible causes of the vaping-related severe respiratory illnesses spreading across the U.S. like wildfire, a likely suspect is emerging: contaminants found in counterfeit vape cartridges, according to the Washington Post.
Pinpointing the culprits behind this lung disease epidemic can’t come soon enough. Last week, the CDC recorded 530 cases of vaping-related lung disease in total across 46 states, but that number jumped 52 percent to 805 cases by Sept. 24. While the majority of sufferers have eventually been released from the hospital, the respiratory illness has now been linked to 13 deaths.
Testing the vaping cartridges from both sources yielded some “deeply troubling” results, according to NBC News. The three from legal dispensaries in California were all free from pesticides, heavy metals, and vitamin E acetate . But the black market cartridges contained several contaminants — namely, pesticides and vitamin E .
“There is extensive literature on the adverse health effects of inhaling pesticides and fungicides,” Ilona Jaspers, PhD, deputy director of the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “Modifying these compounds through thermal oxidation, which is what would occur during the vaping process, could generate additional reaction products that would be harmful to the lungs.
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