mobanmarketWashington: Twenty-six people have died from illnesses associated with e-cigarette use since March, US health authorities said Thursday, while some 1,300 have suffered lung injuries linked to vaping.
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Officials have yet to identify the cause for the outbreak, which dates back to late March, and are pursuing multiple lines of investigation.
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The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that 26 deaths in 21 states had now been linked to vaping, along with 1,299 cases of injury.
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Among a group of 1,043 patients for whom there was data on sex and age, 70 percent were male while 80 percent were under 35.
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More than three-quarters of those sickened used tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive substance of marijuana, with or without nicotine products.
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A report by clinicians in North Carolina last month pointed to the inhalation of fatty substances from aerosolized oils, but a new study by the Mayo Clinic published this week found patients’ lungs had been exposed to noxious fumes.
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E-cigarettes have been available in the US since 2006, and it is not clear whether the outbreak is only happening now — or if there were cases earlier that were wrongly diagnosed.
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Initially conceived as a smoking cessation device, e-cigarette use has skyrocketed among teens, with preliminary official data for 2019 showing more than a quarter of high school students using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.
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They were until recently perceived as a less harmful alternative to smoking because they do not contain the 7,000 chemicals in cigarettes, dozens of which are known to cause cancer.
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Only one case of lung injury has been reported abroad, making the outbreak more mysterious still.
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