PSU professor David Peyton.jpg

A team of PSU chemists, including professor David Peyton, discovered potentially alarming levels of unstable formaldehyde in e-cigarettes.

(Portland State University)

E-cigarettes, which are billed as being safer than traditional cigarettes and are not regulated by federal authorities, can deliver a much bigger punch of formaldehyde, a Portland study found.

Chemists at Portland State University discovered by accident that smoking the e-cigarette equivalent of a pack-a-day produces about five times the amount of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. But this formaldehyde is hidden, hitching a ride on another molecule. In an unstable form, it could be released again in the body.

"We don't know the health effects of this," said professor David Peyton, a lead researcher on the project. "It could be benign. Or it may be quite dangerous. We detected a boatload of it."

The findings were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The article includes a graph comparing the amount of formaldehyde hemiacetal, a so-called formaldehyde-releasing agent, in vaped e-cigarette aerosol particles to the amount produced by smoking a pack a day. The formaldehyde hemiacetal graph is about five times higher. It's also more than 15 times as tall as the amount of formaldehyde gas discovered in a 2014 study of vaped e-cigarettes.

The amount of formaldehyde-releasing agents in the test was also higher than the concentration of nicotine, which is not a known carcinogen. Studies of workers exposed to formaldehyde have indicated a link between exposure and several cancers, including nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates tobacco, proposed similar restrictions on e-cigarettes last year. They're currently under review.

The PSU chemists just happened to discover the presence of the formaldehyde-releasing molecules while researching e-cigarette juice. Using a commercially available, second-generation tank system that's refillable, they simulated the vaping experience by using an artificial apparatus in the lab. They collected the aerosol particles in a tube, dissolved them into a solvent and ran that through a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which uses the same technology that MRIs are based on.

When the results spewed out, they gasped at the sharp peaks. There was no way the flavors or the nicotine could have produced them. They were stumped.

"It took us multiple weeks to figure out what it was," Peyton said. "It was almost embarrassing. The molecules are so simple that they were almost too simple."

Peyton said there is no way to avoid sucking in the formaldehyde-releasing agents, which could release formaldehyde in the lungs or elsewhere in the body, while vaping with a high-voltage tank system. The only option, he said, would be to turn down the voltage.

The next phase could involve studies to try to figure out what impact the formaldehyde-releasing agents could have in the body by studying lung-related cells in a petri dish. It could take years to know what health risks people face vaping high-voltage e-cigarettes.

"We're playing catch up," Peyton said. "The horse is out of the barn."

-- Lynne Terry

lterry@oregonian.com; 503-221-8503

@LynnePDX