Popcorn lung – the lies we have all been told and most of us believed

We have all read the articles foreseeing painful death to all vapers due to the horrible diacetyl present in e-liquids giving everybody “popcorn lung”. During the research carried out by the National Institute of Health the “deadly” diacetyl was found to be present in amounts above the laboratory limit of detection in 39 of 51 e-liquids tested by National Institute of Health. The diacetyl content in tested e-liquids was ranging from the detection limit, up to 239 µg/e-cigarette.

If you read the above paragraph you could feel unsafe, some people would start worrying, some would panic. Unless you will do some more research on your own. Or simply keep reading.

Looking through the National Institute of Health’s website you may find other research papers and findings, such as this gem titled “Safe exposure level of diacetyl” stating that: “Fourteen commercial cigarette brands and one reference cigarette released 301–433 μg of diacetyl per cigarette”.

Strange, why would you warn people about the dangers of diacetyl in e-cigarettes if regular cigarettes contain about 30- 40% more of the “deadly” diacetyl? It must be NIH worrying about our health and the health of the young children being drawn to e-cigarettes “by the colorful packaging and various attractive flavors”.

Well, we kept on reading NIH’s website and found interesting research from 2014 titled “Diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione exposures associated with cigarette smoking: implications for risk assessment of food and flavoring workers.“

The last couple of sentences are what made me write this article. The summary of the research states: “This suggests that previous claims of a significant exposure-response relationship between diacetyl inhalation and respiratory disease in food/flavoring workers were confounded, because none of the investigations considered or quantified the non-occupational diacetyl exposure from cigarette smoke, yet all of the cohorts evaluated had considerable smoking histories. Further, because smoking has not been shown to be a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans, our findings are inconsistent with claims that diacetyl and/or 2,3-pentanedione exposure are risk factors for this disease.”

(It really does say so on their website, you can find it here.)

In case you are wondering, the “bronchiolitis obliterans” is commonly known as the “popcorn lung” and apparently NIH does not consider diacetyl to be a risk factor for it. So if cigarettes contain more diacetyl than e-cigarettes, yet do not cause the dreaded “popcorn lung”, and the diacetyl found in them is not a risk factor in the “popcorn lung” at all, why would you want to warn people about the diacetyl in e-cigarettes?

This almost looks like somebody really does not want us to vape, but for what reason? That seems pretty obvious to most vapers.

Regardless of the confusing research findings Chemnovatic e-liquids and flavorings never contained any diacetyl, nor do we plan on adding any in the future. You may find all the certificates confirming our claims on our website, for Molinberry flavorings please go here. Happy vaping!