niman Posted October 2, 2019 Report Posted October 2, 2019 (edited) The first Nebraska vaping death (68M) died in May. Long tern smoker who switched to vaping 5 years ago was classified as a vaping death because CT scan showed Ground Glass Opacity. https://www.ketv.com/article/this-isnt-as-safe-as-it-seems-family-of-nebraska-man-who-died-from-vaping-send-a-message/29313158 Edited October 3, 2019 by niman
niman Posted October 2, 2019 Author Report Posted October 2, 2019 "All along we were thinking it's Pneumonia and the death certificate said acute respiratory distress," said Steffen's widow, Kathleen Fimple. She said a doctor from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services called her last week and told her Steffen's death is connected to vaping. "I was surprised," she said. Fimple said the state doctor told her that her husband's lungs showed ground glass opacity, something now linked to vaping. "I said, 'Why didn't it look like a lifetime smoker's bad lungs?' and they said. 'It's different. It's clearly different." Steffen was a lifetime, heavy smoker who picked up vaping five years ago to quit smoking cigarettes. "Even though he didn't quit smoking, I think he thought he was in better shape and that it was better for his health to be vaping, than it was to be smoking cigarettes," she said. "We want people to know that may very well not be the case."
niman Posted October 2, 2019 Author Report Posted October 2, 2019 (edited) 'This isn't as safe as it seems:' Family of Nebraska man who died from vaping send a message John Steffan's family says DHHS calls him the state's first death related to vaping 157 Shares Updated: 2:37 PM CDT Oct 1, 2019 Michelle Bandur OMAHA, Neb. — Members of an Omaha family said they thought John Steffen, 68, died from pneumonia in May. "All along we were thinking it's Pneumonia and the death certificate said acute respiratory distress," said Steffen's widow, Kathleen Fimple. She said a doctor from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services called her last week and told her Steffen's death is connected to vaping. "I was surprised," she said. Fimple said the state doctor told her that her husband's lungs showed ground glass opacity, something now linked to vaping. "I said, 'Why didn't it look like a lifetime smoker's bad lungs?' and they said. 'It's different. It's clearly different." Steffen was a lifetime, heavy smoker who picked up vaping five years ago to quit smoking cigarettes. "Even though he didn't quit smoking, I think he thought he was in better shape and that it was better for his health to be vaping, than it was to be smoking cigarettes," she said. "We want people to know that may very well not be the case." Fimple said her husband purchased nicotine only cartridges from big box retail stores. She said he did not visit local vape shops or buy THC products. The family hopes people hear their story and learn about the dangers of vaping before it's too late. "Unfortunately, some people have to die before we realize what can treat it," daughter Dulcia Steffen said. "What we went through, losing dad, watching him, literally take his last breath, his last gasp of air, I wouldn't wish on anyone," Steffen said. https://www.ketv.com/article/this-isnt-as-safe-as-it-seems-family-of-nebraska-man-who-died-from-vaping-send-a-message/29313158 Edited October 2, 2019 by niman
niman Posted October 2, 2019 Author Report Posted October 2, 2019 DPH has identified the state’s first death from a vaping-associated illness. The patient had a history of heavy nicotine vaping, but no reported history of vaping THC. https://dph.georgia.gov/
Rabbit Posted October 4, 2019 Report Posted October 4, 2019 I've been smoking pot since age 18 and I am 56 now. Through decades of pot smoking my lung capacity (which once was Asthmatic since I was born with Chronic Bronchial Asthma) was pretty much ruined. Despite no signs of Asthma, which I lost in teenage years through intensive swimming, I had extremely limited lung capacity. I switched to vaping in 2008. I have smoked also since for six months or even a year at a time but predominately vaping since my lungs clear and I get full lung capacity aqain whilst doing so. Indeed I'd prefer smoking mostly due to the ritual nature but vapes are my salvation when my lungs can no longer handle the daily imposition of smoke and byproducts of pyrolisation. I happen also to be an underground chemist. albeit 'retired' and my police record reflects this. I have seen how much oil and hash is produced by use of solvents and many of the solvents are not easily able to be removed adequately from the final product absent some knowledge and the right equipment, so much of the underground product is tainted. The use of tech grade solvents alone can introduce cynanide etc into the batch. Very few underground labs use anything but tech grade. Lab grade is simply too hot to touch. Tech grade or less is all that they have available unless they have the knowledge to purify it. Which very few have. The problem I see with the currently newsworthy vaping related illnesses is that the context is missing and also there isn't even any way at this time of testing ANYTHING alongside a control group of users who use only natural products. I use exclusively home grown and organically produced cannabis in my vapes. If I extract anything it is done with the correct solvents and laboratory apparatus to at least produce a minimal standard of purity. ie: low temp and minimally poisonous solvents, vacuum distillation etc. I have not only got no health problems from a lifetime of such practices, I am uncommonly healthy and resistant to even chronic illness as time has proven. If you use commercial products, you risk being poisoned. It is that simple. This is one of the two reasons that traditional users of cannabis since the sixties have resisted "LEGALISATION" preferring simple decriminalisation instead. We'd rather get fined for smoking a joint than hand over not only the profits but the CONTROL of our preferred intoxicant to $$$ corporations.
niman Posted October 14, 2019 Author Report Posted October 14, 2019 He Tried E-Cigarettes to Quit Smoking. Doctors Say Vaping Led to His Death. Months after John Steffen died in Nebraska, officials said his death was part of a mysterious outbreak of vaping-related deaths and illnesses. Image Gathered around the family dining room table were relatives of John Steffen, who have been told that he died of a vaping-related illness. From left, they are Dulcia Steffen, his daughter; Kathleen Fimple, his widow; and Ebony DeBolt, his granddaughter.CreditCreditTerry Ratzlaff for The New York Times By Julie Bosman Oct. 14, 2019, 3:00 a.m. ET 26 OMAHA — In the spring, Kathleen Fimple buried her husband, John, and by the fall, she had reluctantly settled into her new life as a widow. She accepted what the doctors told her: that he had died at 68 from respiratory failure and pulmonary disease after years of smoking cigarettes, coupled with a bout of pneumonia. She went back to work. She canceled a trip around Europe that the couple had planned to take this month. Then she got an unexpected call from a doctor at Nebraska’s health department. The department was investigating her husband’s death and would come to conclude that he had actually died of a vaping-related illness. The news made headlines across the state: John Steffen, a tall, bearded father of three who loved to fish, watch the Cornhuskers play football and sing in a baritone so beautiful it could make heads swivel at Mass on Sundays, was the first such case in Nebraska. He was one of at least 29 people across the country whose lives have been claimed in the outbreak. Mr. Steffen’s death deepens the medical mystery surrounding vaping-related illnesses, since most people who have been sickened by vaping have used products containing THC, but Mr. Steffen is believed to have exclusively vaped nicotine. Since the announcement, his family has been beset by fresh anguish and questions. What was it about vaping that killed Mr. Steffen, who had used e-cigarettes and nicotine cartridges that he bought from Walgreens or Walmart? And perhaps most painfully: Would he still be alive if he hadn’t taken up vaping? “It frightens me, because we don’t know what effect vaping has,” said Dr. Fimple, an education administrator in state government, as she sat with her daughter, Dulcia Steffen, in her living room this month. Dr. Fimple nodded in the direction of an e-cigarette package on the coffee table, a crumpled item found while sorting through her husband’s belongings. “It’s like looking at a gun with a bullet,” Ms. Steffen said. ‘I don’t want to quit’ As a teenager growing up on a dairy farm in northeast Nebraska in the 1960s, Mr. Steffen picked up smoking casually, and kept the habit into adulthood. During winters, he would sometimes light up next to the kitchen stove, blowing smoke into the exhaust fan. “He would say, ‘I love it and I don’t want to quit,’” Dr. Fimple recalled. “Eventually, he reconciled that smoking was bad.” Mr. Steffen had two sons from his first marriage, and the daughter he had with Dr. Fimple, Dulcia, would beg him to stop smoking. When Dulcia had her own daughter 15 years ago, she took pictures of the baby and tucked them into her father’s packs of cigarettes. ADVERTISEMENT https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/vaping-victim.html
niman Posted October 15, 2019 Author Report Posted October 15, 2019 What was it about vaping that killed Mr. Steffen, who had used e-cigarettes and nicotine cartridges that he bought from Walgreens or Walmart? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/vaping-victim.html
niman Posted October 15, 2019 Author Report Posted October 15, 2019 (edited) Dr. Henry Niman PhDNew CDC Vaping News And Information Edited October 15, 2019 by niman
niman Posted October 15, 2019 Author Report Posted October 15, 2019 10 minutes ago, niman said: Dr. Henry Niman PhDNew CDC Vaping News And Information http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/rense/special/rense_101419_hr2.mp3
niman Posted October 17, 2019 Author Report Posted October 17, 2019 Note Ground Glass Opacity in case definition
niman Posted October 18, 2019 Author Report Posted October 18, 2019 Tonight 11 PM ET Dr. Henry Niman PhDNEW Information About Vaping Crisis Possible Cause Coming Into Focus
niman Posted October 18, 2019 Author Report Posted October 18, 2019 48 minutes ago, niman said: Tonight 11 PM ET Dr. Henry Niman PhDNEW Information About Vaping Crisis Possible Cause Coming Into Focus https://www.renseradio.com/listenlive.php
niman Posted October 18, 2019 Author Report Posted October 18, 2019 However, 10 percent reported using only vaping products with nicotine. One of those individuals was John Steffen. John Steffen, 68, turned to e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking. This past spring, he became the first person in the state of Nebraska to die of a vaping-related lung injury.Dulcia Steffen Steffen, who had smoked cigarettes since he was a teenager in the 1960s, turned to vaping about five years ago as a way to quit, according to his family. "He never used THC. And he never bought it off the street," said Kathleen Fimple, Steffen's wife. "He bought it strictly at retail big box stores." This past May, most of the family came down with a bad respiratory illness. They all eventually recovered, except for Steffen, 68, who also had smoking-related emphysema. He was hospitalized with pneumonia, and died within a week. His family was devastated, but understood his decades of tobacco use likely contributed to his death. "Knowing that he had compromised lungs, it made sense to say that this had become pneumonia," Fimple said. They had no idea at the time his death that vaping also played a role. On Sept. 30, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services announced that state's first vaping-related death: Steffen, who'd died four months earlier. When doctors took a closer look at Steffen's lung scans, the images weren't typical of a lifelong smoker. They looked more like a person with an extreme lung injury, like that of a chemical burn. "I hope that people become aware of the potential dangers of vaping," Fimple told NBC News. "They tell me they don't know exactly what it is in the vaping process that's causing this illness, but there is clearly an outbreak of something." Despite an ongoing investigation, neither the CDC nor the Food and Drug Administration have been able to pinpoint any one ingredient or product responsible for all of the vaping illnesses. Steffen's daughter, Dulcia Steffen, urges smokers to quit, but to also think twice about using nicotine vapes. "This was perceived as the safe alternative," she said. "Clearly, it's not." https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/vaping-illnesses-continue-rise-no-cause-sight-n1068351
niman Posted October 18, 2019 Author Report Posted October 18, 2019 Steffen, who had smoked cigarettes since he was a teenager in the 1960s, turned to vaping about five years ago as a way to quit, according to his family. "He never used THC. And he never bought it off the street," said Kathleen Fimple, Steffen's wife. "He bought it strictly at retail big box stores." https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/vaping-illnesses-continue-rise-no-cause-sight-n1068351
niman Posted October 19, 2019 Author Report Posted October 19, 2019 After he began five years ago vaping nicotine — e-cigarette brands like Mistic, blu and Juul that were sold over the counter at big-box retailers and drugstores — he never picked up another cigarette. But just as he had smoked a cigarette several times an hour, now he began to vape several times an hour. https://www.todayonline.com/world/did-switch-vaping-kill-longtime-smoker
niman Posted October 21, 2019 Author Report Posted October 21, 2019 On 10/17/2019 at 9:58 PM, niman said: Tonight 11 PM ET Dr. Henry Niman PhDNEW Information About Vaping Crisis Possible Cause Coming Into Focus http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/rense/special/rense_101719_hr3.mp3
niman Posted October 30, 2019 Author Report Posted October 30, 2019 (edited) The Promise and Peril of Vaping, Part 1: A Mystery in Nebraska Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Alexandra Leigh Young, and edited by M.J. Davis Lin and Wendy Dorr How one man’s death is changing our understanding of vaping and its consequences. Monday, October 28th, 2019 Kathleen Fimple You will see the animals on the wall. So, there’s a rainbow trout and an antelope and a deer above the fireplace. So, yeah. Kathleen Fimple You guys can sit — Kathleen Fimple That room’s a mess, but we could pull some things off — Kathleen Fimple My daughter made this. Kathleen Fimple That’s what we used for the funeral. Kathleen Fimple He played guitar, so we’ve got guitar picks, and “Grandma’s Feather Bed” was a song we all liked to sing together. Kathleen Fimple There’s a shotgun shell, there’s the antler — this knife has an antler. Kathleen Fimple He was a Scout leader. Kathleen Fimple Those were from the casket spray. Kathleen Fimple He was a lifelong smoker. Julie Bosman What did he smoke? Kathleen Fimple Marlboros. Julie Bosman Not the lights, the — Kathleen Fimple Oh, no. No, no. Julie Bosman How did he feel about his smoking? Was he like, “Ugh, I hate this,” or, “I love it, and I don’t want to quit.” Or how — Kathleen Fimple I love it, and I don’t want to quit. And also, a lot of denial, especially early on. My grandpa lived to be, whatever, 80-something, and he smoked. Kathleen Fimple Eventually, I think he reconciled that, yes, smoking was bad, and it could cause cancer. Kathleen Fimple In his 30s, while we were first married, he quit several times briefly. Kathleen Fimple He’d stop for a month or two, and then, yeah. Dulcia Steffen So that he would see her face every time he pulled out a cigarette. I was like, O.K., I’ve tried all the little tactics. Kathleen Fimple We’d go to church, and he sing a line, and then he’d stop, and then he’d have to pick it up later because he’d have to catch his breath in between. And he used to whistle all the time — he couldn’t whistle anymore. Kathleen Fimple I think that was when he started vaping. Julie Bosman Do you know how he got the idea? Kathleen Fimple No. We both, I had kind of seen advertisements for it and things, but it was his idea, and he bought one and came home with it. Julie Bosman Do you know which brand? Kathleen Fimple Mistics. Dulcia Steffen Then he had blu, and then he went to Juul. Kathleen Fimple And he only went to Juul less than a year ago. Kathleen Fimple There was a cough, cold going around — Kathleen Fimple And it probably, in some ways, was less obvious to us because he had a smoker’s cough. So he coughed, but it was also obvious that this was worse. Kathleen Fimple That’s probably why he went, though, in April, just because you kept pushing him. Dulcia Steffen Yeah. Kathleen Fimple Dr. Simon said, “You have pneumonia, and you’re going to the hospital.” Dulcia Steffen His hands were like ice. Kathleen Fimple They were starting to turn blue. Dulcia Steffen He couldn’t blink, and his mouth was propped open, and he wasn’t breathing very often. And his last breath I could tell because there was just a slight twitch in his neck. Kathleen Fimple I was in a meeting when the Department of Health called. Kathleen Fimple He asked about any exposure in the past to moldy wood, or wood chips, to asbestos, to pesticides. Then they asked about symptoms. Kathleen Fimple Did he lose weight, was he coughing? Kathleen Fimple I said, I don’t know why vaping — I mean, yes, he vaped, but I don’t think it’s from vaping. They said he had pneumonia. Lifelong smoker, C.O.P.D. — Dulcia Steffen It was a straight replacement for cigarettes. Kathleen Fimple Yeah. Dulcia Steffen Yeah, and part of it was habit. Years and years of habit, when you get in the vehicle, you light up a cigarette. So when he’d get in the vehicle and start to drive, he would vape. Kathleen Fimple I knew it wasn’t the perfect solution, but again, figured it was better. Julie Bosman Right. Kathleen Fimple For him, and for us. Julie Bosman Did you ever think, could they be dangerous? Kathleen Fimple No. No, I — Dulcia Steffen You know, when they first marketed them, they said it was a safer alternative. We assumed it was healthier for those around him as well. Archived Recording 1 This morning, Nebraska health officials have announced the state’s first vaping-related death. Archived Recording 2 That’s right, the person was over 65, and from the Douglas County, which is the Omaha area. The individual died in May, but the State Health Department just identified it as vaping-related. Archived Recording 1 There is breaking news tonight in the nationwide vaping crisis. Another death, and new reports of possible lung disease. The C.D.C. is looking into dozens of cases. Archived Recording 2 The C.D.C. can confirm 31 cases — Archived Recording 3 200 potential cases — Archived Recording 4 380 cases — Archived Recording 5 The 450 cases span — Archived Recording 6 530 cases — Archived Recording 7 It’s unclear just what’s causing the problem. The C.D.C. says it will continue to investigate. Kathleen Fimple And it showed pneumonia in the lower lobe of one lung. But the rest of his lungs, both sides and upper and lower were filled with what they call ground glass opacity. Kathleen Fimple And I said, well, how does that — is that different from just a long-term smoker? And he said, yes. This is not what you would see in just, routine, if you will, long-term smoking. Julie Bosman Is that unthinkable? Do you have any — I mean, is that something that he might have possibly done? Kathleen Fimple I don’t think he would have even known where to go to get it. Dulcia Steffen We’ve been to Colorado since it was legalized, and he wouldn’t touch it. Kathleen Fimple He was never interested. Dulcia Steffen No. So I don’t think he would have ever considered getting it black-market, either. Julie Bosman Do you know where he bought it? Kathleen Fimple Walmart. Walgreens or Walmart. Julie Bosman Walgreens or Walmart. Kathleen Fimple I don’t think he bought them anyplace else. Dulcia Steffen He never went to any of the vape shops or anything. Kathleen Fimple Oh, never. Never. Dulcia Steffen To think that that box right there could be the sole reason he’s dead, in some ways, is like looking at a gun with a bullet. It’s just a method of death. Archived Recording (Donald Trump) Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. Archived Recording (Donald Trump) Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration. Archived Recording (Donald Trump) The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him. Archived Recording (Donald Trump) He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone. Michael Barbaro From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: When John Steffen died, his family had little doubt that a lifetime of cigarette smoking was to blame. Then, the Nebraska Department of Health got an unusual tip. Part 1 of a two-part series on the promise and the peril of vaping. It’s Monday, October 28. Michael Barbaro Julie, tell me about this trip you took to Nebraska. Julie Bosman So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Omaha, Nebraska. Michael Barbaro Julie Bosman is a national reporter at The Times. Julie Bosman And I went to the home of Kathleen Fimple — Julie Bosman — where she lives with her dog, Bo, a little terrier. And Kathleen showed me around her house. Julie Bosman And I sat down with Kathleen and her daughter, Dulcia, and her granddaughter, and they showed me something that Dulcia had made after the death of her father, John Steffen. Julie Bosman It was a glass box. Julie Bosman And inside were mementos that represented his life. Julie Bosman So John was a very active outdoorsman. There was a turkey feather from one of his hunting expeditions. Julie Bosman There were badges and pins. Julie Bosman And there were dried flowers from his funeral spray. Michael Barbaro And how exactly did he die? Julie Bosman So, John died after a long illness. Julie Bosman So he started smoking back in the ‘60s when he was a teenager, and it was a habit that he really stuck with for most of his life. Julie Bosman So he was kind of clinging to the idea that smoking wasn’t bad. Julie Bosman He tried very, very hard to quit. Julie Bosman Sometimes he would be successful, and then he started up again. Julie Bosman And his daughter, when she had her own baby daughter, she would take little pictures of the baby and tuck them into his packs of cigarettes. Julie Bosman So, she tried everything she could, but his addiction to nicotine was decades strong. [Music] Julie Bosman But then he developed C.O.P.D., chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a very common disease that many smokers develop. And in his case, it gave him a very bad cough, and it made it difficult to breathe at times. Julie Bosman He had atrial fibrillation, and sometime later, he got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and had to have chemotherapy for years. Julie Bosman So, John started vaping about five years ago. Julie Bosman And he had heard about vaping as the cleaner, healthier alternative to cigarettes. So he became just as enthusiastic of a vaper as he was a smoker. So, earlier this year — Julie Bosman It was a cold winter, and everybody had a cold, and a cough. And John kind of got it the worst. Julie Bosman And his daughter, Dulcia, started nagging at him, and saying, Dad, you really need to go to the doctor. Julie Bosman So he did, and he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Julie Bosman And he was in the hospital for a week. And seven, eight days into his hospital stay — Julie Bosman He died of acute respiratory failure, which the doctor said was a consequence of the C.O.P.D. Michael Barbaro So essentially, he died of smoking, or smoking-related lung disease, it sounds like. Julie Bosman Yes. His wife said that he always believed that he was going to die of lung cancer. So when the doctors said that he had died, essentially, as a consequence of C.O.P.D., they had no reason to question the doctor’s conclusion. Michael Barbaro And as tragic as that is, it all kind of lines up with our understanding of what a lifetime of smoking does to a person. Julie Bosman Right. But then four months after John died, Kathleen was sitting at work one day. Julie Bosman She got a phone call from an investigator at the Nebraska Department of Health, and he asked her all kinds of questions. Julie Bosman He asked if he had had any kind of vomiting before his death. Julie Bosman And he also asked her about vaping. Julie Bosman And the investigator got off the phone with her and said he would be in touch. Michael Barbaro So Julie, what was John’s relationship to vaping? Julie Bosman Kathleen told me that when he was smoking cigarettes, he would smoke a cigarette two or three times an hour. And very quickly, he was vaping two or three times an hour. Julie Bosman It was a good way to help him get his nicotine fix. Julie Bosman And then a few days later, Kathleen spoke to the medical investigator again, and he told her that it had been confirmed. John was Nebraska’s first official vaping-related death. Michael Barbaro So Julie, what exactly is going on here? Why is an original conclusion about John’s cause of death now being re-evaluated, and, it seems, challenged? What is happening? Julie Bosman So, back in May, when John died, there really was no such thing as a vaping-related death or a vaping-related illness. But throughout the summer, all these illnesses and deaths began to be reported. And all over the country, people began to look back at cases of people who had died, people who had gotten sick, and started to think a little differently about them. And in Nebraska, the State Health Department wouldn’t have even looked at John’s death if they hadn’t received a tip. Michael Barbaro We’ll be right back. So Julie, tell me about this tip. Julie Bosman So, here’s what happened. [Music] Julie Bosman John had an old friend who he went to high school with, and they saw each other at an alumni reunion a few years ago. They sat together with their spouses at this dinner, and throughout the dinner, as she described it, John was vaping constantly. And she had never seen anyone vape before. This was in 2014, it was kind of a new thing. And she told me that she was very alarmed by what she saw. Michael Barbaro What exactly alarmed her? Julie Bosman She was concerned because he was vaping so frequently. Of course, when you smoke, you generally have to go outside and do it. But John was vaping indoors, sitting at dinner. And she also just had this kind of gut sense that there was something kind of wrong about it. And she couldn’t quite shake the feeling, even after the reunion was over and years had gone by. And she and John really didn’t keep in touch, but earlier this year, when John was sick, she had heard that he was in the hospital. And then she heard that he died in May. So she waited all summer, and she started seeing things in the news about people getting sick and dying from vaping. Julie Bosman And she told me that she kept looking in the paper, she kept looking on the news to see if John was one of those people, and that never happened. So at the end of the summer, she decided that she just couldn’t get rid of this feeling that vaping was related to his death, so she called the State Health Department. Michael Barbaro So she was the tip. Julie Bosman Yeah, so her tip gets passed along to a medical investigator, and he was the investigator who called John’s wife and spoke to her, and interviewed her about his medical history. He did a bunch of other things, too. So he spoke to the physicians who attended to John, who treated him when he was sick in the hospital in Omaha. He examined his medical records, he looked at his chest X-rays. Julie Bosman A ground glass appearance on the lungs is an injury to the lung that is typically consistent with vaping. And in some cases, it can look like there are kind of opaque white spots on the X-ray. Julie Bosman And in this case, it was a very key piece of evidence for the investigator who was looking into John’s death. Michael Barbaro And what’s the understanding of how vaping might create this kind of ground glass-looking damage in the lung? Julie Bosman So when you vape, of course, you use a device that heats liquid to a very high temperature, and turns it into a vapor that you inhale. Now, that liquid can contain THC, which is the ingredient in marijuana that gets you high, or it could contain nicotine. And doctors who are investigating all these illnesses and deaths don’t know exactly what it is about vaping that is making people sick. But they have noticed that some of the people who have gotten sick, or died, have had the ground glass appearance on their lungs. Or in some cases, they’ve had damage on their lungs that resembles a chemical burn. Michael Barbaro Julie, my sense is that most of these vaping-related illnesses and the deaths that we have been reading about have been not from the well-known e-cigarette brands, but from basically counterfeit and bootleg products, right? Julie Bosman Yes. So here’s what we know about that. Of the people who have gotten sick or died from vaping in the last year, about three-quarters of them have vaped THC products. A little over half have vaped nicotine, and a lot of people do both, kind of toggle back and forth between vaping weed and vaping nicotine. But as best we can tell, John did not vape THC. When I asked his family, they kind of laughed at the idea that their 68-year-old husband and father would be procuring bootleg THC. Julie Bosman They described his vaping habits as very aboveboard. Michael Barbaro I mean, is it possible that John was vaping something like THC, but just didn’t tell his family? That no one knew? Julie Bosman His family very strongly discounts that possibility. He would have had to be doing it in secret, and they thought that that notion was rather ridiculous. Michael Barbaro So if he got sick from vaping, it was from regular old — I guess if the industry is old enough to call it this, but — traditional vaping? Julie Bosman Yes. And this really only deepens the medical mystery surrounding vaping, because so many people who have gotten sick or died from vaping have been using THC vapes, and especially vaping devices or cartridges that were bought off the street, and no one really knows where they came from. Michael Barbaro But that’s not the case with John. Julie Bosman Right. Michael Barbaro So Julie, how does John’s death, as defined and diagnosed by these medical professionals, locally and nationally, how does it change our understanding of vaping and its consequences? Julie Bosman I think that his death raises an alarming possibility. And that is that someone who apparently did not vape THC, did not buy any kind of products on the black market, could also become very sick and die from a vaping-related illness. Michael Barbaro Right. And his family told you that he took up vaping, as many people do, because he thought it was actually going to make him healthier. It was going to help him quit smoking. Julie Bosman Yeah. He thought that this would be the thing that would help him quit smoking for good, and it did. And you know, people like John Steffen are exactly the kind of person that e-cigarettes were ostensibly created for. When e-cigarettes were invented, and when companies started selling them on the mass market, they said that it was for people who wanted to quit smoking and wanted a healthier alternative. And John was exactly that person. Michael Barbaro So what’s the understanding of why so many people, not just John, but hundreds of people are getting sick from this, and maybe even dying from it? Julie Bosman Well, I would just point to cigarette smoking and when it was first introduced. Cigarette smoking really took off during World War I among American men. And it wasn’t until the 1930s when doctors began to link an increase in lung cancer rates to an increase in cigarette smoking. And it took decades after that — it wasn’t until 1964 when the surgeon general released a landmark report saying, yes, smoking does cause lung cancer. So I think what a lot of doctors out there are saying is that it is far too early to know what the long-term effects of vaping might be. Michael Barbaro In other words, the gestation period for any kind of public health problem is long, is maybe even decades. Julie Bosman Yes. And it’s very early in e-cigarettes’ life. I mean, they really didn’t enter the mainstream until the last 10 years. Michael Barbaro In which case, we would be at the beginning of whatever this is, not even the middle, and definitely nowhere near the end. Julie Bosman I think we can say for sure that the C.D.C. believes that there are many, many more cases coming, and that this is only the tip of the iceberg. [Music] Michael Barbaro Julie, does John’s family think that he would still be alive today if he hadn’t taken up vaping? Julie Bosman That’s a difficult question. It’s something that they do think about. And when they look back on his life, they know that taking up smoking as a teenager was certainly a bad decision, and continuing to smoke all those decades was something that they wish he had not done. But they thought that he made a really good decision when he switched to vaping. They didn’t worry about the health consequences of vaping. And when his daughter looked at the vaping container that was left over, sitting on the coffee table, she doesn’t see something that is harmless or something that might have helped prolong his life. She sees something very dangerous. Michael Barbaro Julie, thank you very much. Julie Bosman Thanks, Michael. Michael Barbaro We’ll be right back. Michael Barbaro That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping-dangers.html?showTranscript=1 Edited October 30, 2019 by niman
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