There has been a questionable epidemic surfacing this past summer regarding vaping which includes 215 life threatening illnesses that have not been identified. Patients in their late teens and 20s have been entering NYU Winthrop Hospital with severe shortness of breath, fever, and vomiting the past few days. Sheila Kaplan and Matt Richtel, authors of The Mysterious Vaping Illness That’s ‘Becoming an Epidemic,’ claim that the cause of these symptoms are from substances that the patients inhaled through vaping products. Health Investigators are looking into whether a toxin has sneaked into cartridges, e-cigarettes, and marijuana-but they haven’t actually found any evidence yet. It’s known that smoking cigarettes leads to horrendous health conditions like lung cancer and death so do we assume the same for vaping?

The article talks extensively about how vaping works regarding oil droplets. Those droplets “may cause breathing problems and lung inflammation.” They do not actually know the cause of these respiratory cases but only speculate that it could be from the oil in e-cigarettes. Apparently, inhaling Vitamin E oil has been associated with sudden and critical respiratory cases in some New York cases as well. Contaminants in vaping products, cartridges, and marijuana have not been discovered and only predictions have been made that these substances have caused difficulty breathing.

It’s possible that there are no contaminants in marijuana or e-cigarettes and these patients already had health conditions before they came in to the hospital or before they started using vape products. A person with asthma who occasionally vapes may have difficulty breathing once in awhile, but that does not mean the cause of it was vaping.

Like the article states, “the ultimate impact from years of vaping is simply not yet known” and it is clear in the article that there are no legitimate facts proving that there are any toxins in vaping products that cause respiratory issues. The 215 patients with “vaping-related illnesses” could have problems that have nothing to do with vaping.