Allow me to introduce you to the e-cigarette. These battery-powered gizmos sound like a ridiculous party gag, and as a matter of fact they are. But they also deliver users a serious portion of vaporized nicotine that is supposed to sate even the most demanding of smokers. As Der Spiegel reports—with a healthy puff of irony and caution—e-cigarettes could be “Smoking 2.0.”
In particular, these gadgets sidestep the 4,000-plus chemicals present in standard cigarette smoke that plume into one’s lungs from the burning of tobacco and tar. This allows e-cigarette smokers to avoid the 50 or so cancer-causing components of normal cigarettes. Not surprisingly, e-cigarette companies make grandiose statements about the health benefits of their wares.
E-cigarettes work like this: Nicotine is dissolved in propylene glycol, and the combination is stored in a cartridge that is designed to look like a traditional orange cigarette filter. The nicotine cartridge screws onto the main body of the e-cigarette, which contains a rechargeable battery that powers an electrical circuit. When the smoker inhales, a sensor in the circuit is activated. This causes a red-light-emitting diode at the tip to turn on. More importantly, the nicotine and propylene glycol are heated up so that they vaporize and get sucked into the smoker’s lungs.
ECigarettesUSA even makes electronic cigarette cartridges without nicotine!
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