Diacetyl

What it’s used for:

As a liquid, diacetyl gives food products a buttery taste. Enjoy buttered microwave popcorn? That may be diacetyl you’re tasting. In vape juice, it’s used to make a wide variety of flavors such as piña colada, chocolate cake, and vanilla. In a recent study, researchers found diacetyl in more than 75% of the vape liquid they tested.

How it affects the body:

No joke: While it’s been shown that it’s okay to EAT small amounts of diacetyl, inhaling it can cause “popcorn lung,” a serious disease that first affected a group of microwave popcorn factory workers 1. The disease causes scarring of the tiny air sacs in the lungs, resulting in wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath.

References and Resource Links

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  1. American Lung Association: Popcorn Lung: A Dangerous Risk of Flavored E-Cigarettes

What is Vaping?

Vaping is the act of inhaling aerosolized liquid from a device, sometimes called a vape pen or an e-cigarette. The device is filled with vape liquid, it heats up, the liquid is aerosolized into millions of tiny droplets, and then inhaled.

What’s in the liquid?

Vape companies call it “juice,” which sounds harmless. They even use fake flavors to make it taste like candy, cakes, and fruit. But it’s not flavored air. And it’s not just water. Vape liquid is a mixture of highly addictive nicotine, potentially harmful chemicals, and other additives that can damage your body.

What’s in the vapor?

The weird thing about vaping is that the aerosol emitted from these devices almost always contains chemicals that weren’t originally added into the liquid. How can that be? It’s because heating the vape liquid produces dangerous byproducts, including heavy metals like lead, aluminum, and nickel. It’s chemistry at work. And it means that you can’t avoid those chemicals by mixing your own liquid or buying local or organic versions.

But someone’s in charge of vaping
to make sure it’s safe, right?

Although the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authority over the manufacturing of vape products that contain nicotine, there is nobody watching what goes into the products that claim to be non-nicotine.  It may be years before the FDA considers regulating chemicals used in vape products.

Just ask the chemicals that have been found in vape liquid and vapor.

We call them The Chemical Crew.

They’re all hardworking with jobs that make sense. But when they find out they’re sometimes getting inhaled via vape liquid, they get upset. Which they should, since they can seriously harm your body. Find out what they’re doing to Escape the Vape!

Meet the chemical Crew!

What is Vaping?

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