and why you shouldn’t care
I did an analysis of the inside of a nicotine vape today, and I found lead in the cartridge to the tune of approximately 60 parts per billion.
Now, that might sound like a lot. Heck, it's 20 times higher than the proposed action level for baby foods.
But let's break this down.
We need to understand what one part lead per billion means when we’re talking about a gram of vape juice, and how that amount compares to other sources of lead in our daily lives.
So let’s look at it this way: if one gram of vape liquid has one part lead per billion, we can simplify things and say that it contains one nanogram of lead, total.
In the case of this vape cartridge, each gram of vape liquid contains 40 nanograms. Therefore, the entire cartridge of vape juice contains between 240 and 400 nanograms of lead.
For reference, one Lunchable contains 370 nanograms of lead.
The difference between a vape and a Lunchable is- that a lunchable is a single serving meal, whereas a vape cartridge lasts a few days to a week, even a month, depending on the user.
If you were to vape this entire cartridge in one day, you would be consuming 240-400 nanograms of lead. Assuming you aren’t ingesting significant amounts of lead through sources.
Typically, when foods have lead it’s in fairly low amounts. From a lead safety perspective, food is only dangerous if you’re eating a significant amount of highly contaminated or adulterated food. When we compare lead levels found in food (or vapes) to those of lead-based paint, paint chips, paint dust, or lead- contaminated soil and water, the food lead levels pale in comparison. Lead-based paint is 75% lead. A lead water pipe is 100% lead! In the case of soil, the dirt in a backyard can easily contain several thousand times as much lead as food does. Consuming even one gram of soil that is 500 parts lead per million (a level that is commonly found in industrial or formerly industrial areas) would expose a person to 500 micrograms of lead, or 500,000 nanograms. That's a lot of lead. A lot more than the 350 or so nanograms found in one vape cartridge.
In short, I don't think that lead exposure from vaping nicotine is a serious concern.
I’m not sure how many of you would be interested in this, but I will be testing cannabis vape cartridges soon, which might yield higher levels of lead due the oil extracted from the cannabis plant itself. More soon!
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