2014-03-24

Re: [DIV28SUPER] peril of e-cigarettes

Herb,

You are absolutely on target. What concerns me especially is that young women will find these to be attractive alternatives to tobacco, and will be unaware of the potential risks to the fetus once they become pregnant. Marijuana legalization poses the same kind of problems, of course. I wish more public attention were being paid to such risks. It took a long time for us to become sensitive to developmental neurotoxicants.

Bernie
_______________________
 Bernard Weiss, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental Medicine
University of Rochester
School of Medicine and Dentistry
Rochester, NY 14642

tel:         585-275-1736
fax:        585-256-2591




From: Herbert Barry III PhD <BARRYH@PITT.EDU>
Reply-To: "BARRYH@PITT.EDU" <BARRYH@PITT.EDU>
Date: Monday, March 24, 2014 10:37 AM
To: "DIV28SUPER@LISTS.APA.ORG" <DIV28SUPER@LISTS.APA.ORG>
Subject: [DIV28SUPER] peril of e-cigarettes

When I initially heard about e-cigarettes, I doubted that they were safe
alternatives to tobacco because of omitting components of tobacco that
cause lung cancer and other maladies. Nicotine is a powerful endogenous
substance, and overloding the system with exogenous nicotine might have
adverse side effects, such as disrupting the balance between nicotinic and
muscarinic stimulation.

The new information about toxic and even lethal effects of liquid nicotine
indicates a very severe peril. I am reminded now about reports, many years
ago, that swallowing a few cigarettes might be lethal because of overdose
of nicotine. The effect is greatly diluted when nicotine is in a smoked
cigarette.

An analogy is the dangerous and even lethal effects of overdose and
chronic ue of morphine, heroin, ad other opiates. An important advance of
our knowedge a few decades ago was the discovery of endorphins, which are
endogenous sources of analgesia, miimicke by opiates.
--- Herb Barry

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