New Delhi: Vaping and the use of e-cigarettes are likely to cause cancer, according to a new study published by the University of New South Wales on 30 March. The study, which brought together a group of scientists from thoracic medicine, oncology, pharmacy and clinical sciences, used existing evidence to look at the multiple risks of cancer for people who regularly use cigarette alternatives.
Vapes are electronic devices that do not contain tobacco like normal cigarettes, but do contain nicotine and a few other chemicals. While they are often marketed as an aid to quit smoking, there have been studies in the past that look at the harmful health effects caused by the vapes themselves.
The UNSW study used four main kinds of evidence to show how vaping is harmful and can be carcinogenic: Human studies of cancer cases among vape users, animal studies showing how rats developed lung cancer after being exposed to vapes, lab studies analysing the carcinogenic components found in vape smoke, and mechanistic studies that look exactly at how cancer develops in human beings.
“To our knowledge, this review is the most definitive determination that those who vape are at increased risk of cancer compared to those who don’t,” said Dr Bernard Stewart, scientist in the Paediatrics and Child Health Department at the UNSW and corresponding author of the study, in a press release.
Published on 30 March in the Carcinogenesis Journal, the study warned against the use of vapes and e-cigarettes, both for normal use and as a tool to quit smoking.
Significantly, the study did not conduct trials or studies of its own, and instead relied on broad-based assessments of existing studies that approach cancer risk in vapes through different evidence analyses. According to the press release, the scientists wanted to equate cancer research in vapes to smoking-led cancer research, which took over a century to get adequate public attention.
“Even early scientific reports on smoking linked it to tuberculosis and strokes before identifying it as cancer,” said Freddy Sitas, one of the authors of the study.
“Vapes were introduced 20 years ago. We shouldn’t wait 80 more years to decide what to do,” Sitas said.
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Lack of population-specific data for vapes
One of the biggest challenges with cancer research on vapes is the lack of long-term population studies that directly display the link between vaping and cancer. Since vapes were only introduced in global markets in the early 2000s, the patterns of population exposure are still not clear.
Cancer is known to have long latency periods and often takes decades to show up in widespread population numbers. Additionally, with vapes, the problem is also that many vape users are either former smokers or current smokers, meaning it is difficult to isolate the impact of just vaping on potential cancer causes.
The study, however, explicitly said that even existing evidence points very strongly to one conclusion: Vapes increase the risk of lung cancer and oral cancer.
“Our assessment is qualitative and does not involve a numerical estimate of cancer risk or burden. We’ll only be able to determine the precise risk once longer-term studies are available,” Stewart said.
The scientists used examples of smoking to show how research on the harmful impacts of smoking began in the mid-1800s onwards, yet these studies were often overlooked in public discourse and policymaking. It was only in 1964, with the US Surgeon General’s report, that smoking became officially recognised as a cause of lung cancer.
In Australia, the government banned the use of e-cigarettes recreationally in 2023 after widespread use among young populations. India banned vapes in 2019 under the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, a 2023 study in Elsevier’s Preventive Medicine Reports said the products are still widely available in the country and pose a huge public health challenge.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)