Exploding E-Cigarettes Cause Traumatic Injuries in Teens

Might 20, 2022 – A examine reveals that over a 4-year interval, 15 youngsters have been injured from exploding e-cigarettes, in response to surgeons who’ve handled younger individuals at 9 hospitals in america.

“It positively was an harm we have been seeing continuously,” Shannon Acker, MD, an assistant professor of pediatric surgical procedure on the College of Colorado College of Medication and a pediatric surgeon at Kids’s Hospital Colorado, mentioned in a press release.

Reporting within the Journal of Surgical Analysis, medical doctors element accidents from e-cigarette explosions from January 2016 via December 2019. Ten teenagers have been hospitalized, together with three who have been admitted to intensive care models.

“Once we take into consideration e-cigarettes, vaping, and the issues of selling cigarettes to youngsters, it often has to do with habit and lung harm,” mentioned Acker, a co-author of the brand new examine. “Whereas we, as trauma surgeons, have been seeing these different traumatic accidents.”

Six of the teenagers had facial burns, 5 of them misplaced a number of enamel, 5 had burns across the thighs and groin, 4 burned their arms, and 4 burned their eyes. One teen injured their radial nerve, which runs via the arm. One other reduce their face, and one fractured their jaw.

Total, six teenagers wanted surgical procedure, together with one who wanted a number of operations for a extreme hand harm.

Three of the youngsters had by no means used e-cigarettes earlier than the day they have been harm.

Vaping has turn into much more widespread than smoking conventional cigarettes amongst U.S. teenagers lately. Greater than 2 million of them presently use e-cigarettes, in response to the FDA, together with greater than 11% of highschool college students and virtually 3% of center schoolers.

Most e-cigarettes comprise nicotine, which is very addictive and might impair wholesome mind growth in adolescents, in response to the CDC. Different chemical compounds and flavorings within the liquids which might be heated throughout vaping also can injury the lungs. Fires and explosions, whereas uncommon, are additionally a threat that is been beforehand documented by the FDA, the CDC, and the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA).

Nationwide, there have been 195 reported explosions and fires involving e-cigarettes in all ages between 2009 and 2016, in response to a FEMA report. Whereas no deaths have been reported, 29% of those circumstances concerned extreme accidents.

“The form and development of digital cigarettes” could make them behave like “flaming rockets when a battery fails,” in response to FEMA.

Vaping units sometimes use a chargeable lithium-ion battery that vaporizes the liquid nicotine resolution, Acker says.

“They aren’t extremely regulated, and the batteries could also be of inferior high quality and vulnerable to explosion.”