Is Vaping Really Bad for You

Most e-cigarettes, or vapes, contain nicotine, which has known adverse health effects.1 ... Acute nicotine exposure can be toxic. Children and adults have been poisoned by swallowing, breathing, or absorbing vaping liquid through their skin or eyes. More than 80% of calls to U.S. poison control ...

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States · A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites

Vapes are proven to cause real harm. The evidence on the health harms of vaping is growing.

Vapes emit an aerosol that includes 31+ chemicals and compounds that affect different parts of the body. The brain is still developing until around age 25. Using nicotine during adolescence can permanently harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, and impulse control. Flavoring chemicals such as diacetyl can permanently injure the lungs. Breathing in ultrafine vapor particles can lead to asthma attacks, coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath.

Nicotine exposure can negatively ... Additionally, nicotine can worsen mental health issues (e.g., anxiety or depression) and may enhance the risk of developing chronic diseases (e.g., cancer and heart disease)....

Since their introduction into the global market nearly 20 years ago (Henningfield & Zaatari, 2010; Lichtenberg, 2017), e-cigarettes (also known as nicotine vapes) have undergone significant evolution in both the design of the devices and the types and concentrations of nicotine e-liquids available. There has also been an exponential increase in use, with about 6 % of Canadian (Statistics Canada, 2023) and American (Vahratian et al., 2025) adults reporting current e-cigarette use in 2023. Younger age groups indicate the highest rates of ever-use (Health Canada, 2023a, 2023b; Kramarow & Elgaddal, 2023), with 25.2 % of New Zealanders (Ministry of Health, 2024) and 9.3 % of Australian (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2024) youth aged 18 to 24 years reporting daily e-cigarette use in 2023.

Thus, the findings of health effects are not simply an explanation of established knowledge or a continuation of existing regulatory positions. New findings reviewed and analyzed in studies of the heart, brain, and lungs show that despite repeated assertions of safety by e-cigarette proponents, there is significant evidence of damage to the body’s vital systems from e-cigarettes.

The flaws in studies addressing the “gateway effect” have been discussed at length [28]. The studies we analyzed lacked sound research methods, and as such, could not reliably establish causation or identify a gateway effect. Moreover, health behaviors related vaping and smoking were described with insufficient detail as to the duration, amount, and frequency of the vaping/smoking. This renders participant classification uninformative, and the resulting data unreliable. For example, the phrases “tried vaping” and “was a vaper” may describe two very different levels of vaping exposure, yet these participants may be classified together in a research study.

Researchers have known for years that tobacco smoking can cause damage to blood vessels. However, the effects of e-cigarettes on cardiovascular health have been poorly understood. The two new studies – one on humans, the other on rats – aimed to change that.