[MattZan]

Hello, I am likely going to be painfully ignorant for all of you to cringe here, sorry about that, but hopefully someone will be polite enough to help me out.

I am interested in getting myself a specific model of an electronic cigarette and I have recently found out it operates at 3.7 volts. This raises a concern.

A while back, there has been a study on formaldehyde production during the vaping process at 5 volts, which is absurdly high for electronic cigarettes and almost nobody has that setting on a daily basis (tends to generate a "dry puff", which is everything but pleasant). In the same study, they mentioned they detected no formaldehyde at 3.3 volts, which I have been using as a safety reference. However, they did not discuss any other voltage level between these two.

I have read the rules entirely and I did not seem to find any that disallows me from giving an external source, so this is the study I am talking about: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1413069

If I missed something, sorry.

In any case, would 0.4 volts of difference be enough to start formaldehyde production?

Thanks!

[Borek]

My understanding of the e-cigarettes is that the voltage has nothing to do with products - it is only a proxy for the temperature of a heating element, but exact numbers depend on the heating elements properties itself. In other words, I would expect effects of the voltage applied to differ between e-cigarette brands.

Definitely the process - and its products - do change with the temperature and it seems logical that the amount of aldehyde (being a decomposition product) produced grows as the temperature gets higher, but you can't guess its concentrations, you have to measure it (and again, the effect will depend on the brand, not on the voltage).

[MattZan]

Thanks! I would also like to know what you or others think about the New England Journal of Medicine, if you have opinions about it. It is supposed to be a reputable source, but the only reply I received so far hints me to think that whole study was wrong from the start.

[Enthalpy]

I have no opinion at all about this journal in particular. But I do now that reputable journals, including peer-reviewed ones for hard sciences with working theories, publish authentic nonsense too, and rather frequently.

And the opinion I do have is that a scientist makes his own mind based on knowledge and individual thinking and experimenting, which is the exact opposite of caring about reputation.