E-cigarette criticisms are ‘alarmist’ say researchers

A team of researchers have dismissed recent health warnings over e-cigarettes as “misleading,” saying they have the potential to save tens of thousands of smokers every year. For every million British smokers who give up tobacco products in favour of e-cigarettes, more than 6,000 premature deaths could be prevented annually, experts from University College London (UCL) have said. They estimated that would equal over 54,000 lives saved every year, were all of Britain’s nine million smokers to switch.

Toxin concentrations are almost all well below one twentieth that of cigarette smoke.

Professor Robert West from UCL’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.

The findings come in stark contrast to recent warnings over potential health risks associated with electronic cigarettes. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that bystanders can inhale significant levels of toxins from the vapour, and that they could be acting as a gateway to tobacco smoking. But according to Professor Robert West and Dr Jamie Brown from UCL’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, the concentration of toxins in e-cigarettes is in fact “very low”.

E-cigarettes are new and we certainly don’t yet have all the answers to their long-term health impact, but what we do know is that they are much safer than cigarettes, which kill over six million people a year worldwide.

Professor Ann McNeill from the National Addiction Centre at King’s College London

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