• dualmindblade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    A vape with a borderline dangerous amount of lead in the liquid might still be superior to cigarettes from a health standpoint, but why risk it when you can just use a regular non disposable one with coils and juice from reputable brands?

      • dualmindblade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        Yeah seems like it, the gold standard coil alloy is kanthal and, don’t quite me on this, but I think it’s been basically the only one considered acceptable for “roll your own” coils since like forever, so almost certainly what you were using. And most DIYers used to use nic freebase only (not sure if that’s still the case), the paper implicates the hcl salt nic as possibly making the metal leeching thing more efficient:

        Nicotine salts introduce organic acids (5) in e-liquids, which may facilitate metal dissolution in e-liquids through ligand–metal interactions.

        Anyway, the metal of concern in kanthal is chromium which can be non-toxic depending on the chemical form. The paper stated they didn’t detect any toxic version of chromium in the vapor, although they speculate it might be possible for this to undergo a further chemical change in the lungs:

        Nontoxic Cr(III) was the only oxidation state of Cr observed in aerosols

        But they also detected metals that didn’t come from the coils! Like Escobar brand apparently has a coil sheath that is 40% lead. Like what the actual fuck were they thinking with that design decision? And sure enough the juice had lead in it before it was even vaped. Also they found antimony and stated they didn’t know where it came from, presumably it would be something the juice came into contact with before the device was put together.