Life-threatening bronchiolitis related to electronic cigarette use in a Canadian youth

Bronchiolitis Obliterans (popcorn lung) is indeed real though extremely rare. It is caused by accute exposure to Diacetyl, a chemical used to enhance buttery and custard flavors in the food industry (and the vape industry for a short time ending 2014/2015). Diacetyl is also a naturally occuring chemical produced in various fruits, vegetables and plants. The most notable of which is Tobacco. More on that in a minute.

I think it is quite questionable for any educated health professional to pin the blame on this youth's lung injury on popcorn lung, as there has been a plethora of scientific data negating the possibility. I assume willful ignorance is to blame here, an utter failure to research the plethora of available data. There is 750x more diacetyl in a pack of cigarettes than there is in a days worth of vaping nicotine fluid, and to date we have no confirmation that smokers are getting popcorn lung.

To put that into perspective: A vaper is exposed to 9mcg of Diacetyl (study by Allen et al., [https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1510185]) per day whereas a pack a day smoker is exposed to 6718mcg (Fujioka and Shibamoto study, [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/tox.20153]) per day. Yet popcorn lung has only been diagnosed in those popcorn factory workers almost 20 years ago, there can be no credible argument that someone vaping nicotine e-liquids had their lungs damaged by diacetyl. This youth would have had to vape 746 days worth of nicotine vape liquids in just one day in order to be exposed to as much diacetyl as one gets from smoking 1 pack of cigarettes.

This is all quite public and scientific knowledge, if I could link websites here I would have included those as citations. But I am sure the esteemed writers of this article know how to use the google and find research and studies done and/or referenced by the likes of; Dr. Micheal Seigel and Professor David Sweanor (North America's anti-tobacco champions) as well as Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos and Riccardo Pelosa just for starters.

Bottom line: Consider that the FDA issued a warning well over a month ago in relation to the danger of vaping black market THC oils (https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/vaping-illness-update-fda...). And the patient himself admitted to vaping such, while the chief medical officer of the Middlesex-London Health Unit admitted knowing the youth had purchased his product from the U.S.A.

It is an extreme stretch to blame this youth's issues on a much fabled yet obscure disease, when the symptoms match perfectly with those suffering and dying in the U.S. due to Vitamin E Acetate contaminated THC vape carts. Had a direct and clear warning gone out at the end of August when Leafly sounded the alarm about THC vape carts being the cause, we might not have 42 dead and over 2000 hospitalized. Public Health England and it's media partners nipped their THC vape cart scare in the bud back in July by doing exactly that (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-49001669). No one died, crisis averted.

It is my opinion that the misinformation being bandied around by our health officials, media and politicians for the last 3 months is nothing less than reckless endangerment, responsible in large part for the 42 dead and counting, this article is just as bad. As if it is not bad enough that 600 people will die today in North America from tobacco use when there is a far less harmful alternative, an excellent gateway to living smoke free.

It's interesting that I see no mention of THC products that were determined to be the cause of the issue of the cases throughout the United States. With the teen here getting their products online from an American company. Maybe the evidence hadn't been announced at the time of writing but this article should be amended to reflect this. The broad use of the word Vaping as a reason or cause in and of itself is misleading and uninformative. Its like blaming the needle a heroin junkie uses when the overdose on bad product. And it is the bad unregulated product in the US that is the Issue. THC oils cut with vitamin E acetate and laced with toxic pesticides that has been on only common factor found. This might have been learned earlier had the medical establishment taken appropriate steps to gather evidence and take a proper history. unfortunately by the CDCs own admission this didn't even begin to happen till after the 9th person died. The rampant misunderstanding that is being spread thanks to the general term of vaping has become so widespread that the doctors themselves failed to do their duty and thus the American public was mislead with false data often leaving people taking precautions from the wrong product.and ultimately dying. We Must do better to ensure that this kind of behavior is not condoned or even given enough weight to get off the ground lest we find cause to over regulate one product that halps while trying to safeguard against something else entirely.