Vitamin E Acetate

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Anchor lead: Is vitamin E acetate the culprit in vaping deaths and hospitalizations? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Vitamin E acetate is a chemical used to cut THC liquid for vaping purposes, with a recent study finding it is almost all lung samples from people who were hospitalized with vaping related lung injury, known by the acronym EVALI. Panagis Galiatsatos, a lung expert at Johns Hopkins, says that’s just one of the many chemicals we really don’t know much about in all vaping products that were touted as safer than combustible cigarettes.

Galiatsatos: E-cigarettes came along with that promise without the science to back it up at all. That public health realm that it was shoved into has blinded us to this youth epidemic use of e-cigarettes where now, we have this youth usage of products that we have no idea about. The vitamin E acetate. They’re using mom and pop shop vaporing products and no one has tested or regulated. We’ve unleased the failure at the moment of a new generation of patients that are addicted to nicotine products that we don’t know the long term consequences. We know a lot about the immediate consequences but to me that’s still the tip of the iceberg.  :33

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.