Electronic cigarettes are hailed as the healthier, more considerate alternative to traditional tobacco, but new research may force those claims to go up in smoke.

It took a long time, and a lot of public education, but cigarette smoking is at an all time low. The American Cancer Society reports that “cigarette smoking has decreased among adults in the United States from about 42% of the population in 1965 to about 19% in 2011.” Before you start your victory dance, that still means that about 43.8 million (or 1 in every 5) adults smoke cigarettes.

In recent years, electronic cigarettes have emerged as a possible antidote to our cultural obsession with smoking. Rather than burning tobacco, these battery-powered devices use heat to vaporize liquid nicotine. This delivers the desired buzz, but produces no smoke, which means anti-smoking regulations don’t apply.

Sounds great, right? Smokers get the nicotine they crave and the rest of us get to breathe clean air. There’s even some evidence that people who switch from real tobacco to electronic cigarettes are more likely than those who use nicotine patches to quit smoking altogether. Unfortunately, new research also suggests that these hand-held vaporizers might not be the benign substitute that e-cigarette companies want us to think they are (surprise, surprise).

A study published recently in France’s National Consumer Institute claims that electronic cigarettes contain “a significant quantity of carcinogenic molecules” despite the fact that they don’t burn real tobacco.

“Using a new method of testing, researchers found that in three out of the ten e-cigs studied, the level of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, came close to the amount in conventional cigarettes,” reports The Week. “Furthermore, a highly toxic molecule called acrolein was detected “sometimes at levels even higher than in traditional cigarettes,” said Thomas Laurenceau, chief editor of the magazine.

These findings confirm what the US Food and Drug Administration hinted at back in 2009. At the time, the agency, which has not approved electronic cigarettes, said that some samples contained ingredients found in anti-freeze.

If this is true, and electronic cigarettes do contain all of the same cancer-causing crap as traditional tobacco products, is it wrong to exempt them from smoking bans? Is allowing these vaporizers to be used indoors, even on airplanes, a dangerous hypocrisy that puts the rest of us at risk?

New York City Mayor Bloomberg seems to think so. Electronic cigarettes are the focus of the ban-happy Mayor’s latest health campaign. “The city’s Health Committee is considering several proposed ordinances related to cigarettes, including one that would classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products,” reports The Week. If successful, e-cig smokers would be out in the cold with their tobacco-smoking counterparts.

Such a ban, just like laws against traditional smoking in public places, is controversial. Should people be allowed to decide what they put into their bodies, harmful or not? Or is it the government’s place to protect public health by limiting the use of both real and electronic cigarettes? Share your thoughts in a comment.

Related on Ecosalon:

Protecting Yourself From The 20 Percent of People Who Still Smoke

What’s Behind The Surprise Global Spike In Female Smoking?

Image: Ibrahim Ba’im and Equazcion

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I had asthma as a kid. This meant that I was pretty much dependent on chemicals to get oxygen into my lungs and that I wouldn’t step out of the house without an abuterol in hand. Soccer game? I had an inhaler stashed by the bench. Prom night? My understanding boyfriend carried it in his pocket. It wasn’t the worst way to grow up, but it definitely had its memorable moments – usually caused by an unfortunately empty inhaler canister and a habit of breathing.

So to this day, when I see someone light up a cigarette, I watch with a secret kind of awe. It’s like watching someone walk on the moon without an oxygen tank. How is this possible that they aren’t collapsing to the ground like a goldfish out of water? Since my lungs would be vomited out on the sidewalk if I took a drag, this is perversely fascinating. I want to walk up to them and knock on their chest to see if they actually have lungs of steel. (And yet, I don’t.)

The one upside to asthma? If you are really really lucky to outgrow it, you really really appreciate your new-found ability to breath without chemicals. But unfortunately, if someone steps into my air space with a cigarette, I have an immediate problem. Sure, it’s not my business if Private Citizen wants to smoke. But it is my problem because Private Citizen’s second-hand smoke is “a toxic cocktail consisting of poison and carcinogens. There are over 4000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke; 200 of which are known to be poisonous, and upwards of 60 have been identified as carcinogens.” And this is one problem that no one needs.

The American Heart Association estimates that around 23 percent of men and 18 percent of women smoke. Sure, that’s better than “Mad Men” times when doctors were lighting cigarettes for pregnant mothers. But it still means we’re going to run across a smoke cloud or two in our daily adventures.

I handle these errant smoke clouds by treating the world as a giant track and field event. When I encounter smokers, I get out of their space as quickly as possible and keep my anti-smoking opinions to myself. (However, an awesomely sweet guy did once offer to put his cigarette out on my tongue when I asked him to snuff it.)

But still, sprinting is problematic. First, it’s not always practical to race around someone in high heels/pushing a baby carriage/walking with someone who doesn’t recognize you are holding your breath and are about to collapse into a heap of pathetic. Second, a good friend of mine is a smoker who hates it when people run past him as he’s carrying a biological weapon. Can’t we just all get along?

So what to do? If you are traveling, there are steps you can take. Ask for a non-smoking room or, better yet, book a smoke free hotel. FreshStay offers a great resource on finding smoke-free hotels. If you are hosting a party, offer up alternatives to smoking – gum, water, snacks. Or ask them to step aside – though your average smoker is a reasonable human being who knows his or her smoke is going to bother people, so he or she is doing this anyway.

And in the end, if someone really doesn’t get the hint? You can pull out a Breath of Life Emergency Escape Mask and start sucking down air. If you’re going to make a point, go big.

Image: yourdon

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He’s baaack!

You’ve all heard of Richard Pombo, right? For 14 years, he represented a real-life version of the smoke monster from Lost to environmentalists everywhere. The Tracy, CA cattle rancher was even given a cute nickname by President George W. Bush: “The Marlboro Man.” From 1993 to 2007 Pombo represented the 11th Congressional District, which runs from Morgan Hill to Danville along the east side of I-680, including farm towns like Manteca and Lodi.

So why is he so toxic?

Pombo introduced bills to expand offshore oil drilling (“Drill, baby drill!”), rewrite the Endangered Species Act (“Die, Bambi, die!”) and increase logging on public lands (“Fell, baby, fell!”). He even advocated more commercial whale hunting (I guess dolphins and baby seals weren’t big enough game), and infamously that environmental regulation “owes more to communism than to any other philosophy.” Seems reasonable. I could swear the last time I went hiking that the wind in the willows seemed to be whispering Marxist propaganda at me.

Then came 2006. Environmentalists spent more than $1 million to help Democrat Jerry McNerney, a former wind energy executive, upset the rootin’ tootin’ pollutin’ Marlboro Man. But this week it appears that Pombo will be coming out on top and reinvigorating his political career – and worse, his political agenda. He’s running in the Republican primary in what may be California’s hottest congressional race of the June 8 election.

His district will include, wait for it, Yosemite National Park. That sound you’re hearing is a thousand woodland creatures screaming collectively.

Pombo and the other three candidates, state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced; former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson; and Fresno City Councilman Larry Westerlund, have similar positions on the issues. They all have angled for lower taxes, an overturn of President Barack Obama’s health care law, and new rules to waive the Endangered Species Act to allow more water to be pumped to farmers from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Can’t evolution of flora and fauna be stifled by the law? What good is lawmaking anyway if it can’t put limitations on everything, even nature?

The Stetson-donning Pombo, has stated that if elected, he’d not only start with 14 years seniority, but with insight into how Congress works, particularly when it comes to water and wildlife laws.

Here’s something to chew on: If the GOP wins back the House in November, Pombo has said that by January he could be chairman again of the powerful House Natural Resources Committee. Perfect!

“This is a tight race,” he said. “The state, the Central Valley, doesn’t have a lot of time. We’re in trouble. We need somebody who is going to be effective immediately. That’s what I bring to the table.”

What are greenies doing about this? Not much, I’m afraid. (Really, with this kind of threat to the environment, how can anyone not be afraid?) The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has spent around $65,000 on radio ads calling Pombo “another corrupt politician.” (Been there, done that, guys.) The Humane Society Legislative Fund has distributed thousands of mailers – which is kind of counter-intuitive if the mailers are not printed on recycled paper, which you just know Pombo and his ilk will call out. And the League of Conservation Voters put Pombo on its “Dirty Dozen List,” normally reserved for sitting members of Congress – do they not realize that The Dirty Dozen is the title of a movie starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland – precisely the kind of “man’s men” that deems the classification a compliment?

“Having Pombo represent a district that includes Yosemite National Park is like electing Godzilla as mayor of Tokyo,” said Warner Chabor, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters. No, Warner, it’s not. Godzilla was a stranger in a strange land. Richard Pombo is a danger in endangered land.

During the campaign, he has caught controversy for once taking money from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and also for billing taxpayers $5,000 after taking his family in 2003 on an RV trip of national parks. I mean, come on. Californians, when you vote in this election next week, take a look outside your window and hum the “This Land is Your Land” tune. When you do that, remember that those lyrics are little more than Communist what’s-mine-is-yours propaganda. Do you like the view from your den? Enjoy it now, because it’s about to become Marlboro country.

The post The ‘Marlboro Man’ Returns to Ruffle Green Feathers appeared first on EcoSalon.

“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.” – Tom Waits

As a conscious human living in America you have probably been aware for some time now that smoking is bad. It increases the incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, birth defects and dead puppies. But young adults of the 18-to-25 variety – especially those of the lady persuasion – are smoking more than any other age group, even though they’ve grown up with the most complete access to information on smoking’s attendant health risks. Seriously, is this because of Mad Men?

Health organizations and anti-smoking activists have herded American smokers out of the public sphere, hustling them away from parks, bars, restaurants, airports, federal buildings, and malls, generally for the greater good. Fewer smokers lighting-up in fewer places is good news for public health and sanitation. Yet while the number of American smokers has decreased almost by half since the 1960s, the number of young adults who smoke has remained steady for the last decade. At a certain point, anti-smoking ads featuring hundreds of ‘dead’ baby dolls stop being effective and start being ridiculous. Demonizing smoking as being its own separate brand of evil (as opposed to obesity or binge drinking) doesn’t do much to reduce smoking, although it does go a long way toward making nonsmokers feel morally superior.

Accepting that for a certain subset of the population smoking will most likely always be a popular recreational activity may be more useful in reducing its environmental impact than trying to shame smokers into hiding. The electronic cigarette, or ‘e-cigarette’, a reusable, battery-powered nicotine-delivery system is a definite step in the right direction. It’s still chocked full of all those hard-to-pronounce chemicals like acetylpyrazine and terpineol (in other words, it’s still not good for you), and its legal status in many countries is still under review. It vaporizes a liquid nicotine cartridge (rather than using fire, as a traditional cigarette), has no disposable filters to end up in the trash or on the sidewalk, and comes recommended as a better alternative to cigarettes, pipes and cigars by the American Association of Public Health Physicians.

The e-cigarette isn’t green by any stretch of the imagination. Quitting smoking, or not starting at all, is still ideal. But anything that reduces the incidence of second-hand smoke and hazardous litter is something worth investigating. Plus, you’ll still look totally cool puffing away. Don Draper might just approve.

Image: SuperFantastic

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