FIRST VAPE DEATH?
Tragic dad, 57, had oil in lungs from e-cigs – and now his widow warns: These devices aren’t safe
A FACTORY worker is thought to be the first person in Britain to have died from vaping.
Terry Miller, 57, succumbed to a form of pneumonia linked to oil in the vapour he inhaled through e-cigarettes he used in an attempt to give up smoking.
His widow Glynis, 66, from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, warned vapers yesterday: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you they are safe.’
A build-up of oil was found on Mr Miller’s lungs, which doctors said was due to his use of the vaping devices. These were relatively new in Britain at the time of his death in 2010.
Gateshead coroner Terence Carney recorded an open verdict at his inquest that year. Mrs Miller, who is calling for a new inquest, said: ‘Terry wanted to quit smoking so he started using an e-cigarette. They weren’t the same as the contraptions on the market now – the one he used looked like a cigarette.
‘But it still used a similar oil and that’s what they found on his lungs. I want people to know that despite what Public Health England may say about them being 95 per cent safer than cigarettes, these things can kill.
‘People are puffing on them thinking they’re safe and they aren’t. Our family was left devastated.’
Mrs Miller said doctors asked her husband, a father of two and grandfather of four, whether he was a smoker after scans when he reported shortness of breath.
He was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead and doctors found oil in his lungs. He was diagnosed with lipoid pneumonia and fibrosis, a chronic lung condition which doctors suspected may have been aggravated by his vaping.
He died six weeks later in August 2010. A post-mortem report said: ‘It was thought that he [Mr Miller] may have developed lipoid pneumonia from the inhalation of oil-blended concentrated nicotine from the device.’ Mrs Miller said X-rays taken when her husband was admitted to hospital revealed ‘a build-up of oil on Terry’s lungs which at first they couldn’t explain’.
She added: ‘The doctor asked Terry whether he was a smoker and he said he’d quit but pulled the e-cigarette from his pocket and told him “I use these”.
‘At the time they were new to the market and the doctor had never seen one before. He took it away to have it analysed.
‘Within five weeks and five days of that first X-ray, we had lost him and it was devastating.
‘I remember the doctor taking me into a room as Terry’s condition deteriorated and telling me he had lipoid pneumonia caused by the oil in his lungs which had cells growing in it.
‘The doctor said he could rule out any other cause, like his work in the factory, and that he was as certain as he could be that it was caused by the e-cigarette.’
Alarm over vaping has been growing in the US, where 13 deaths and 805 cases of breathing illnesses have been linked to the habit.
Mrs Miller said: ‘For all this time I’ve been telling everyone I can that it just isn’t safe and it’s only now, nine years later, that people are finally starting to question it. I’d ask anyone who vapes to think again.’
Public Health England has not issued a health alert in England, saying the ‘evidence on the causes of the cases in the US is not yet conclusive’.
‘Within five weeks we’d lost him’