Scientists said vaping could “wake up cancer cells and cause a new wave of cancer within ten years.”
newspaper quoted “The independentIn a report on Monday, researchers from the Francis Crick Institute (FCI) said that “although vaping is safer than smoking traditional cigarettes, the long-term health risks are unclear.”
The newspaper claims that around 3.6 million people in Britain smoke e-cigarettes and it is commonly used by former smokers to help them quit smoking.
Professor Charles Swanton, clinical scientist at FCI and chief medical officer at Cancer Research UK, says vaping is a potential health threat to people.
“I don’t think we can say that vaping is necessarily a safe option for quitting smoking. It might be safer, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe,” he added.
“We don’t know for sure if vaping will cause lung cancer in ten years,” he said.
FCI researchers have conducted studies to understand why some people with lung cancer in the UK – around one in eight patients – are not smokers, even though smoking is a major cause of the disease.
They conducted studies in humans and mice to measure exposure to airborne pollution particles that can cause cancer cells to grow in the lungs.
Their findings suggest that irritants such as air pollution cause inflammation, which is then followed by a healing process that “awakens” dormant cells that can cause cancerous mutations, and researchers fear vaping could lead to the same process.
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