Ashtray Blog: An Electronic Cigarette Blog
E Juice? How long till it kills someone...
One e-smoker, contributing to a discussion on an e-cigarette forum, recently speculated on the lethal nature of the e-juice he was carrying. (If you have no idea what we are talking about when we say e-juice, make sure you check out our E-Cigarette Glossary!)
A little 3cc bottle of TW’s unflavored 36mg, put into an unsuspecting person’s drink, would be quite an assasination tool. Good thing I like most people!
To be honest, while we are keen proponents of the e-cigarette, e-juice makes us nervous. Nicotine, in its pure form, is one of the most lethal poisons known to man.
While relatively few people get nicotine poisoning via a cigarette – most of the nicotine is burnt in the process of smoking – tobacco gatherers regularly get sick from nicotine leaching from wet tobacco leaves onto their skin.
The symptons are not nice – they include vomiting, palpitations and tachycardia.
A serious case could be followed by coma and death.
Somewhere between 30 and 60 mg of nicotine are needed to kill someone (see Inchem’s page on nicotine), and hopefully, with its unpleasant taste and sharp odour, a drinker would notice it before it killed them. As the e-juice carried by smokers is not in a pure form, fatalities in adults are pretty unlikely.
However, it takes far less nicotine to kill a child (around 10mg). In fact, recent stories in the news suggest that nicotine cartridges alone could be lethal.
With over twenty children a year alrady suffering from nicotine poisoning after eating cigarettes (which surely can’t taste that good) and e-smokers already complaining that nicotine liquid solution is not safe, it doesn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to see e-juice posing a threat to kids…
Update: Dr Murray Laugesson, one of the strongest defenders of the electronic cigarette, has also pointed out the dangers of the e-juice. You can see his warning here.
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21 Comments → “E Juice? How long till it kills someone…”
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The person who wrote that obviously doesn’t know that the concentrations of nicotine in e-juice are not strong enough to kill anyone unless you consumed quite a bit…
IMHO, they are safer than the nicotine gum which is much more appealing to children
There are lots of poisons and contaminates in our modern society. Responsibility and prudance are the key to using E-Juice safely and they should have child proof caps and be kept away from children, just like we keep poisonous cleaners and other household items that are dangerous for kids out of their reach. If a child is harmed by E-Juice it’s not the Juice’s fault…IT’S THE PARENTS!! Alcohol is also poisonous yet I bet many of us have it sitting on the counter and they don’t even have childproof caps!
Seriously? Well here is one for you… children can choke on dimes and die.
Should we ban all coins?
Cars kill people every day, should we stop driving?
I don’t need anyone to protect me, or my family from the horrible danger of nicotine poisoning…
How about you do something positive with your time and educate all the morons in the world? Start with the kid that tried to liquid cool his xbox in a bucket of water and almost died.
MORON – go look in your medicine cabinet, then under your sink, and then in your garage. You will find at LEAST 20 or 30 more bottles of STUFF that will kill you just as dead. If you have e-cig juice in your house, treat it with the same respect that you would give bleach, borax, weed killer, anti-depressants, blah blah blah…. get the point? (yes, a tiny bit of borax will kill you very dead)
Your “KIDS” jab is especially stupid. I have kids. I am smart enough to put all the above listed poisons out of reach or locked up. Anybody so stupid to not do that, shouldn’t have kids to begin with.
Oh hi Aurelle, I see you have bothered to read the post this time.
you said before “The person who wrote that obviously doesn’t know that the concentrations of nicotine in e-juice are not strong enough to kill anyone unless you consumed quite a bit…” – while it takes about 60 mhg to kill an adult 10 mg could kill a child.
Brando – I do actually see your point. However, part of what worries me is that e-juice doesn’t always come in a safe container – and while it’s easy to say its the parents’ fault if they do swallow nicotine, my kids certainly seem to get everywhere.
Anonymous – have the guts to leave a name.
James,
My opinion remains unchanged,nameless or not.
James:
Do you have bleach in your house?
Is it in a child save container?
Do have any kind of cleaning supplies in your house that are just as deadly in small dosages to children? How do you store them?
The amount that can kill and the container it comes in is a moot point when it comes to children, like you said “they certainly seem to get everywhere” SO, I believe it is the adults responsibility. Gee, I dont know what happened, it must have been that the bleach was not in a safe container, so my kid drank it. Is that still not the adults responsibility? Take some responsibility for yourself and let the responsible people take care of themselves.
It’s simple. Keep all poisons away from children. Period. Saying that e-juice is any worse to have in the home than the prescription and over the counter medicines, cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils, etc. that we all own based on the fact that it could kill a child is highly illogical. Parents don’t get rid of all their kitchen knives when they have children– they don’t quit taking their blood pressure meds– we keep those things safely away from the children! Just as we protect our toddlers by not allowing them to run into the street where cars can kill them or pick up snakes, etc, etc, etc.
I read a very good suggestion once about how to be even more vigilant– keep your juice in a small lockbox and wear the key around your neck on a chain.
One more quick thing– nobody is stopping a parent who wants to take extra measures from pouring their e-juice into a child-proof container, even if it didn’t come in one. Electric outlets are very dangerous to small children, and I think most parents deliberately put child-safe “caps” on them. (But just like with medicine’s child-proof caps, you better still watch them and protect them because they can be more clever than one might think!)
hi all,
yes, e-liquid could be very dangerous if it got into the hands of a small child. but as other sensible people have suggested, you simply need to keep it out of their reach…….problem solved!
i review electronic cigarettes on youtube and speak regularly with many different suppliers. i would like you guys to know that nearly every e-cig company i speak to are now bringing in safety measures such as child proof lids to make sure that e-liquid will be as safe as possible. one company called TECC (theelectroniccigarette.co.uk)even have all their cartridges now sent out in child proof containers.
the correct steps are gradually being put in place by e-cig companies to ensure total safety, but ultimately the safe and appropriate use of liquid nicotine is the responsibility of the user.
cheers,
scott / igetcha69 on youtube
I’ve yet to see a child proof package for regular cigarettes and they are something that is more likely to be left laying about with no thought given to the dangers. Personally, I have no children in the house, but plan to keep my supplies in lockable box.
Intersting debate! Is it difficult to measure the exact quantity desired into the e-cig cartridge though? The cartridges I have come iwth a meaured acceptable “dosage”
I would no more over indulge on an ecig than I would on a tobacco cigarette. Everybody’s nicotine tolerance/habit varies. When users body reaches an acceptable dosage of Nicotine, your brain says, “ok, I’ve had enough for now, I am satisfied”.
Would I smoke a whole pack of tobacco in one sitting?, of course not. It would make me physically sick. Same holds true to an ecigarette. Many people who do not have a Nicotine habit, seem to look at this in an non-logical view. You can’t vape an extra amount of ecig, and then just suddenly die, that concept is ridiculous. As with tobacco, you get physically sick first.
Even if the amount of Nicotine in cartridges were controlled, what would stop me from inhaling 4 or five instead of just one? People need to look at this with common sense!
Responsible adults, should have every right to make their own decisions as with any drug. whether it be tobacco, alcohol, prescribtion drugs….etc,etc, etc.
Good point about no childproofing on cigarette packs. And just as important, no warnings about ingestion on the packs either.
I can't tell you the number of times my baby daughter got a hold of cigarettes and started eating them. Call me stupid, but I never really even put 2+2 together re. the potential nicotine poisoning.
The nicotine juice I bought for my e-cigs is the first place I've even seen such a warning.
My kids are older now and a bit wiser, and so am I. I am glad to see the warning on the nicotine juice bottles because it made me aware of the danger.
We had a warning message from Dr Murray Laugeson. Dr Laugesson is a highly respected scientist who has done as much as anyone in support of the electronic cigarettes. In the warning he advises people to avoid nicotine juice. He also pointed out to us privately that it would take just one incident with a child and that would be the end of e-cigarettes.
(You can read his full warning here: http://www.healthnz.co.nz/ecigarette.htm)
Despite the aggression of some of these people, I can't really believe they would want a kid to die, even if their parents were stupid enough to leave e-juice lying around, but maybe from a selfish point of view they would consider that it would only take one stupid parent to put an end to e-smoking.
It's also great that the better manufacturers now provide warnings and safe bottles, as we do with refills. However, there are still many dodgy manufacturers and suppliers out there who are only interested in a quick profit.
It would take about 2/5 a teaspoon of 18mg/ml e-juice to kill an adult through skin contact, about 10 drops for a child. If you have it and kids you should lock it up since a spill can be deadly. It does not have to be ingested.
Patrick, I’m an adult male weighing about 180 pounds and I’ve even spilt 36mg juice all over my hands before. I just went and got a tissue and wiped it off; I suffered no noticeable ill effects. I’ve also had a few drops of it leak out of a cartridge into my mouth (yuck).
It sounds like you’ve made an estimate based on the known toxicity of nicotine. But toxicity figures are expressed in terms of the amount actually *absorbed* into the body and I suspect you’ve forgotten to take account of the rate of absorption through the skin. So if you spilled 100% neat nicotine into an open wound perhaps that could cause ill effects, but maybe nicotine-spiked glycols aren’t absorbed through the skin of the hand quickly enough for brief skin contact with commercially-sold e-juice to pose a significant risk. At least, not to adults.
All forms of nicotine need to be treated with respect, stored carefully and kept out of the reach of children, but if e-juice was even a fraction as dangerous as you claim, there would surely have been many deaths already and it would have been all over the news.
Just keep it away from children.
It would appear from his post that Patrick is labouring under the delusion that e-liquid is as lethal as raw nicotine. E-liquid is highly diluted and, to date, there have been no reports of users being harmed in any way from its use and certainly not as a result of spillage. Like Ralph, I’ve often spilled e-juice and simply wiped it off my hands and have suffered no ill effects whatsoever; I wonder how dangerous a similar spill involving a caustic drain cleaner would be. I have a cupboard full of potentially lethal substances the misuse of which would have far worse consequences than a tiny amount of nicotine diluted with a comparatively large amount of glycerine/distilled water/food flavouring.
E-cigarettes are intended to be used by adults who are perfectly able to take responsibilty for their actions and who do not require nannying. It seems it’s perfectly acceptable for me to buy tobacco products that, we are told, are known to killi hundreds of thousands and yet it is not OK for me to use an e-cigarette that, to date, has harmed no one. It is also perfectly OK for me to chew gum containing liquid nicotine, to stick patches on my arm that are impregnated with liquid nicotine, to spray liquid into my mouth that contains liquid nicotine and to suck on a plastic tube contaiining cartridges that dispense liquid nicotine directly into my mouth (and tasts disgusting) and yet to inhale a vapour containing liquid nicotine is frowned upon as nicotine might possibly harm me? Give me strength!
What is the REAL reason the e-cigarette is considered unacceptable?
For 44 years I smoked upwards of 30 cigarettes a day and since I took my first draw on an e-cigarette10 months ago, I haven’t touched tobacco; my dreadful cough has gone and I haven’t felt this good since I was a child so how is the e-cigarette bad for me?
You make bold claims of conjecture to suggest that e-juice is some highly poisonous assassination tool. e-juice is not some atomic radioactive liquid you are making it out to be. There is no difference between it and any other liquid not intended to be consumed. your article is written as some kind of conspiracy theory and you claim to be a savior to stop people from dying as unsuspecting victims all of which have no validity or empirical validity. If you are claiming that someone HAS ALREADY died then provide the evidence of such. If you are trying to claim that someone DEFINITELY WILL die if no action is taken and wish to claim it is a direct result of e-juice being sold in this country. then make such a claim outright and do not merely suggest it in context. You know darn well if you made such a bold claim it would be disregarded outright as insanity which is why you carefully word it as a “could be” possibility only to invoke fear and impose your perspective of the debate. In your same logic I could make the claim of some dish soaps and hand lotions that are left on the kitchen and bathroom counter being a dangerous concentrated alkaline that can potentially harm adults and kill children if consumed or are continually sold without child proof caps and government regulation.
In reality, I suggest that there are people that believe that if they do not need it, then it is unnecessary. Add that to the instinctive disposition of (FIGHT OR FLIGHT) and you have people who will reach for any scenario where they are at risk. and will form a completely conjectural stance of victimization to give there fear a validation, and will then attempt to infect others with a mass hysteria to stand by them and fight for their cause and defend themselves, their friends, and their children from an impending doom. A doom of which was created by the imagination of the person who first took umbrage over an inanimate object that caused no threat by itself.
In essence it is an evolved version of how primitive cultures breathed life into a poltergeist or “cursed” relic. either out of mental boredom or to take blame off of themselves if the crops did not grow that year.
In all fairness I think a lot of these scare comments are probably from representatives of tobacco companies. Think of all the revenue they are already losing in regards to the e-cigarette. Think of how much more they will loose if it really catches on. The other thing is the government taxes on smoke products is a multi million dollar market. Don’t think that they want to let that go to easily, and it would be a little more than obvious if they just started taxing e-cigarettes like regular smokes. So the scare tactics is the most logical approach at this point.
Just my two bits.
I agree with some of the comments above, in that there are many things that we partake of in our daily lives that aren’t great for us, but it all still comes down to choice. My uncle switched to e cigarettes and after some time passed, he actually began to smoke less. He still smokes, but he enjoys the e cigarettes.