Vaping was once seen as the healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes, with it proving helpful to many nicotine addicts across the world.
However, the explosion in popularity of disposable and single-use vapes, particularly among young people who had never previously smoked, has thrown up some serious health concerns in recent years.
There have been widely reported cases of ‘popcorn lung‘, with the chemicals inside vapes causing significant damage when overused, with the almost constant use in comparison to usual cigarettes also causing significant issues.
One such victim is Manchester woman Kayley Boda, who was tragically given less than two years to live by doctors after her lung cancer returned, despite being just 22.
“A few months after I switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus,” she explained.
“Doctors turned me away eight times with a chest infection. Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an x-ray and found a shadow on my lung. They told me they were 99 percent sure with me being so young that it wasn’t cancer, so not to worry about it.
“When I got the results back and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal. Before the diagnosis, I was very naïve and thought that something like this would never happen to me.”
Kayley Boda has been given 18 months to live (SWNS)
Although she was briefly given the all clear back in February, she started suffering serious chest pains not long after and was informed that the cancer had returned in the pleural lining, meaning there was little more that modern medicine could do for her.
It has long been suggested that vapes are a great way of getting someone to quit smoking altogether but recent studies suggest that far more people, in the UK at least, vape rather than smoke, and despite the ban that was put in place last year, it’s clear that young people are still easily getting their hands on the dangerous devices.
Studies have also pointed out the long term effects of vaping on our health, with researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University starting an investigation back in 2023.
Participants were measured on their vascular health and the speed that blood travels to their brain, and the findings suggested that both smokers and vapers had a ‘flat reading’ which signalled damaged artery walls that can no longer violate, meaning they are at risk of severe cardiovascular problems in the future.
She was initially given the all clear in February (Kayley Boda/SWNS)
Dr Maxime Boidin, who led the study, told The Mirror: “Smokers tend to go outside and smoke, and once a cigarette is finished they have to light up another to keep going,” the leader said. “But with vapes, you just keep going and it’s much harder to know how many puffs you’ve had.”
The researchers were confident that a lot of the issues that arise from vaping stem from inflammation, which is caused by nicotine and the other metals and chemicals found in vapes such as propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine.
“When you put this mixture of metals and chemicals into your body you can’t expect nothing to happen,” Boidin concluded.
Other studies have also linked vapes to higher risks and rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as high blood pressure and cancers.