Chemists work to identify ingredients in e-Cigarettes

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Vapes are growing in popularity with school-aged kids and governments are scrambling to stop the practice. Ingredients vary widely and now two researchers in New South Wales are working to shed a light on what's actually being inhaled.

Transcript

00:00 It's not as easy as you might think to find out exactly what's inside a vape.

00:06 Many brands have been leaving key ingredients like nicotine off the back of the box.

00:12 So I've come here to the University of Wollongong to meet with two chemists who've been taking

00:16 apart thousands of these to find out exactly what Aussies have been inhaling.

00:25 Sifting through bags of confiscated vapes from schools around New South Wales, Dr Jodie

00:30 Morgan and Dr Celine Kelso are on a mission.

00:33 We want to be able to monitor what's there, see if there is the potential for anything

00:36 to be causing significant harm and then feed that back into Australian policy to make sure

00:41 that we're really in the best position to make sure that particularly our young people

00:46 who are vaping at increasing rates aren't exposed to anything that is potentially harmful.

00:51 After taking apart and testing vape after vape, they've made confronting discoveries

00:56 about the levels of nicotine present.

00:58 An e-cigarette, so your sort of standard disposable e-cigarette, has the equivalent of about 12

01:04 to 16 packets worth of nicotine in it.

01:07 So that's a packet of 20 cigarettes.

01:09 So there is quite a lot of nicotine in a disposable e-cigarette.

01:13 If you're using those, you know, if you go through a disposable e-cigarette in a week,

01:17 that would be the equivalent of smoking one and a half to two packets of cigarettes a

01:21 day.

01:22 But it's not just the nicotine that's raised concerns.

01:24 Banned substances have also appeared in test results.

01:28 About 4% of the samples that we analysed had at least one compound that was banned in Australia

01:33 in the e-cigarette.

01:34 So in particular we found ethylene glycol, which is antifreeze.

01:38 So we found that for the first time in any Australian sample in our most recent study

01:43 and that was actually in an e-cigarette that was confiscated off a school child in a New

01:47 South Wales school.

01:49 Using excessive amounts of nicotine can irritate throats, so manufacturers have added a coolant

01:54 under the name 'Ice' to the vapes to help soothe the pain and make it easier for people

01:59 to keep vaping.

02:00 They are a chemical that doesn't have any flavour but that makes your mouth feel cold.

02:06 And we suspect that they are being added to sort of deaden the burning sensation from

02:12 the inhalation of nicotine, particularly for naive users, so young people who might not

02:16 be used to being exposed to nicotine.

02:19 As new vapes keep popping up on the market, weaving their way through legal loopholes

02:23 and landing into the hands of school children, it's hoped research from this lab can inform

02:28 legislation to help governments get on top of Australia's rising vaping problem.

02:34 (upbeat music)

02:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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