Bad, but still not as bad as a cigarette TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty

Vaping could cause cancer – but it’s still safer than smoking.

E-cigarettes, which vaporise nicotine without producing smoke, are soaring in popularity as people switch from regular cigarettes. Their rationale is that most of the harm from smoking comes, not from nicotine, but all the other compounds in tobacco smoke.

But new evidence suggests nicotine itself and some of its by-products may also cause cancer. When human lung and bladder cells are grown in the lab, they turn cancerous at a higher rate if exposed to the nicotine compounds, according to work by Moon-shong Tang of New York University. And mice that breathed in the vapour had DNA damage, which can lead to cancer.


Even so, a major US report out last week concluded that vaping is likely to be “far less harmful” than conventional cigarettes. This is a watershed, as US doctors have previously been cautious about promoting vaping as a way of quitting smoking, unlike in the UK.

The review of over 800 studies by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that using e-cigarettes may help people quit smoking. On the down side, they could also act as gateway to traditional smoking for adolescents.

Some studies find that teenagers who vape are more likely to go on to smoke – although it could just be that those teens who start vaping while under-age are more likely to be rebellious in other ways.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718185115