The truth about vaping and your health: We are finally getting answers - and this is why leading experts are getting increasingly worried...

When consultant breast surgeon Professor Kefah Mokbel is planning to operate on a patient who vapes, he always asks them to quit a few weeks before the surgery. ‘People who vape also have higher complication rates with problems such as pneumonia and thrombosis, leading to dangerous blood clots – so if someone vapes regularly we tell them to quit to improve their outcome.’ While acknowledging that vaping is safer than smoking tobacco, Professor Mokbel and other experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the potential health risks. The evidence on cancer and vaping, while based on lab studies, ‘is robust’, says Professor Mokbel – but he admits more research needs to be done to accurately assess the impact. Hazel Cheeseman adds: ‘According to the King’s College London review, there is little evidence to suggest that vaping leads to cancer but that doesn’t mean that there would not be other health risks over time.’ Questions over link to gum disease Vaping can dry out your mouth because propylene glycol and nicotine, both found in e-liquids, reduce saliva production. Nonetheless, Hazel Cheeseman says: ‘We know that exposure to all sorts of pollutants can damage your lungs over time so it is reasonable to think that vaping could impact the lungs if you use vapes for a long time.’ Asthma + Lung UK says: ‘People with asthma tell us it can irritate their airways.’ Rarely, vaping has been linked to lipoid pneumonia, where the alveoli fill up with dead white blood cells laden with fatty material, causing inflammation and infection.