South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Study finds secondhand exposure to vapor harmful to teens’ lung health
Secondhand vapor from electronic cigarettes is harmful to others, causing bronchitis symptoms and shortness of breath in young bystanders, a new study reports.
Secondhand exposure to vapor increased teens’ risk of bronchitis symptoms by 40% and shortness of breath by 53%, according to findings recently published in the journal
Thorax. The effect was even worse on people who don’t vape or smoke. They were three times more likely to develop bronchitis symptoms and twice as likely to develop wheeze or shortness of breath, the researchers found.
“Those people are really suffering much more,” said lead researcher Dr. Talat Islam, assistant professor of research population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “The effect of secondhand exposure to vape was much bigger” among people who never vape or smoke.
The health effects from secondhand vapor are similar in magnitude to those associated with secondhand smoking, and should prompt more U.S. locations to ban vaping in public places, Islam and his colleagues concluded.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have added e-cigarettes to their indoor clean air laws, according to the American Lung Association.
For this study, Islam and his colleagues analyzed data gathered by the Southern California Children Health Study, an ongoing study that surveyed a group of teens and young adults annually from 2014 to 2019.
Participants were asked if they had suffered from bronchitis, a daily cough, congestion, phlegm, wheezing or shortness of breath during the previous year. They also were asked if they had been exposed to either secondhand vaping or smoke. Nearly 2,100 teens were included.
The percentage of teens and young adults exposed to secondhand vaping rose from 12% to 16% between 2014 and 2019, while the percentage exposed to secondhand smoking declined from 27% to 21%, the investigators found.
The researchers reported that those exposed to secondhand vaping had an increased risk of bronchitis and shortness of breath, even after they took into account other possible lung health factors.