New Study Finds that E-Cigarettes Have No Adverse Effect on Respiratory Epitheli

Posted by Annie shaffer on December 12th, 2018

A new study conducted by British American Tobacco and published in the journal Toxicology in Vitro reports that e-cigarette aerosol from two conventional products had no adverse effect on human respiratory epithelial cells (in cell culture), while tobacco smoke caused almost complete cell death.

While one cannot necessarily extrapolate from this study to all e-cigarette products, at least we now know that one major brand of electronic cigarettes appears to have relatively benign effects on the cells lining the respiratory tract, in contrast to cigarette smoke which exhibits very high levels of cytotoxicity. This finding is consistent with earlier studies showing that the aerosol produced by e-cigarettes did not contain measurable quantities of most of the chemicals of concern that have been detected in the aerosol produced by some e-cigarette brands.

A major contribution of this research is that it sets out a procedure that could be used to test the cytotoxicity of various brands of electronic cigarettes, providing some assessment of the potential for respiratory irritation or inflammation that could be associated with these products. It could also help the FDA identify manufacturing procedures and/or quality control measures that prevent the formation of the unwanted chemicals in e-cigarette vapor, which could aid the agency in crafting quality.