The National Park Service announced Monday that electronic cigarette use is now banned anywhere smoking is prohibited on its vast and far-flung landholdings, despite unsettled science on possible health effects from secondhand vapor inhalation and what’s likely a minimal fire risk.

National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis publicly announced the new policy in a press release, describing it as a step to safeguard people’s health – fighting words for advocates of the devices, which vaporize liquid that's generally laced with nicotine.

“Protecting the health and safety of our visitors and employees is one of the most critical duties of the National Park Service,” Jarvis said. “We are therefore extending the restrictions currently in place protecting visitors and employees from exposure to tobacco smoke to include exposure to vapor from electronic smoking devices.”

Park Service employees were alerted to the policy last week in a memo that cites disputed findings about e-cigarettes emitting formaldehyde and a toxic chemical also found in antifreeze.



The memo says the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution in light of the scientific findings and uncertainty to date, and in the interest of equity.” It amends a 2003 policy document – last revised in 2009 – that bans smoking inside the service’s buildings and vehicles and allows park superintendents to further restrict outdoor smoking. Parking lots and sidewalks are generally exempt.

Jeremy Barnum, a spokesman for the Park Service, says if a park superintendent now decides to restrict outdoor smoking for reasons such as preventing forest fires, that restriction also would apply to electronic cigarettes.

It’s unclear if a wildfire has ever been attributed to an electronic cigarette, though the devices’ powerful batteries rarely do start fires. Conventional smokers, meanwhile, caused nearly 1,000 fires in 12 states between 2000 and 2011, burning about 20,000 acres and costing $22 million to extinguish, according to a study published last year in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.

That journal article notes a dramatic decrease in the number of outdoor fires linked to cigarettes in recent decades, and hypothesizes the drop is due in part to better techniques for detecting a fire's origin but also to a decline in the national smoking rate. In recent years, that rate has continued to decline as e-cigarettes have gained in popularity among longtime smokers.

Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association trade group, says the new restrictions are a bad idea and should not be enforced.



"Outdoor smoking bans in parks can at least somewhat be justified by the risk of fires, but vapor products pose no more of a fire risk than a cellphone battery,” he says. “This behavior is shameful and any enforcement of the ban will constitute a great misuse of government resources. The National Park Service should leave ex-smokers alone and let them camp and hike in peace."

Little is know about the long-term health effects of inhaling electronic cigarette vapor, and public health experts and researchers offer vastly different estimates on potential impacts of the devices, which can be customized to preferred vapor density and nicotine content.

The Park Service memo demonstrates an awareness of the difference between cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapor, but in doing so makes a broad generalization about the devices, saying exhaled vapor contains nicotine "at a level roughly one-tenth of that found in secondhand smoke."