Passive Vape Exposure

In my role as a bus driver  I am out there in the public domain of Edinburgh more than most, and am concerned about the degree of passive vape exposure that myself, my colleagues, and the general public are being exposed to. 

Everybody knows that cigarettes are bad and that it is not OK, and indeed illegal in enclosed public areas, to subject other people to passive cigarette smoking.

With vaping (electronic cigarettes) the story is completely different, and the legalities not quite as clear cut. Consequently people are vaping everywhere, including enclosed public places, and particularly on the city's buses.

A large percentage  of vape users seem to be sold on the idea that vaping is safe, and therefore feel they can do it anywhere. The prevailing attitude appears to be that anyone who complains of exposure is being over-the-top.

However, I have born witness to many members of the public becoming adversely affected by passive vape exposure. Asmatics, and those with pulmonary fibrosis and bronchial diseases can be severely triggered. Children and babies seem to get bothered, rubbing their eyes and crying. Some people, such as myself, get allergic reactions.

The way that vape users smoke is very different to how cigarette users smoke. If a cigarette user decides to smoke, for the most part they do so as means of taking a break from what they are doing. They will get themselves a drink, sit down somewhere cigarette friendly, make themselves comfortable, and then smoke their cigarette. The act of smoking the cigarette has a beginning, where they light up, a middle involving the smoking of the cigarette, and an end when they stub it out. Sometimes people do smoke their cigarette while walking along the pavement, waiting outside a shop, or at a bus stop, but again, the act remains steeped in a beginning, a middle, and an end.

This is not the case for the vape. A vape has approximately between 150 and 800 puffs. There is no beginning, middle, end, psychology. A vape user takes puff after puff randomly without any structure to the act. Furthermore, since the inflammatory aspect of the device is enclosed, the vape can be conveniently puffed on and pocketed at any given moment, thus satisfying the body's addiction more upon whim, rather than by mental appointment.

The vapour from vapes differs from the smoke of cigarettes drastically. While ciggerette smoke disappears from view because the solid particles spread out so thin that your eyes can no longer see them, floating around in the air until they slowly settle onto surfaces, the vapour from vape physically changes from a visible liquid mist into an invisible gas, to become part and parcel of the humidity of the air itself.

The smoke from a cigarette is limited to a slow restricted draw, burning just a few milligrams of tobacco, creating a small volume of hot thin smoke containing billions of particles. The vapour from a vape contains heavily concentrated liquids. A single puff from a vape vaporises a much larger volume of liquid mass, which instantly expands into billions of dense droplets.

A cigarette smoke particle is a feather-light speck of carbon soot. The droplets involved in a vape puff contain thousands of times more physical mass. The sheer volume of airspace impacted by a single puff of a vape is significantly larger than that of a cigarette. Therefore, when a person has a hypersensitivity or allergy to vape, the physics of the vape cloud creates a much larger physical "danger zone".

Via the medical mandate of attempting to reducing dependence on ciggarettes, vapes have been pundited as being a safer alternative that smokers can transfer to. While films and TV have depicted vaping as being a cool kid look, causing youths who have never smoked ciggarettes to uptake vaping. However, vapes can contain far more nicotine in a single puff than ciggerettes do.

Consequently, people who vape are hopelessly addicted, unable to restrict themselves, often puffing on their vapes every few minutes.

People routinely walk in the street puffing their vapes oblivious to the fact that people, and children, and babies in prams behind them are being enveloped in the resulting cloud of vapour.

Vapers at bus stops gasp on their vapes as they approach the doorway of a bus, regardless of the vapour from their vape drifting into the faces of others and onto the bus itself. Many simply vape on the bus in direct contravention of the no vaping policy.

People stand in the doorsteps of public venues seemingly unaware that the vapour from their vape is being sucked into the premises.

At nightclubs the same people who go outside to smoke cigarettes can be seen vaping on the dance floor.

People sneakily take little sips of their vape in bars, restaurants, and cafes, quickly returning the vape unit back to a pocket not to be identified as the culprit.

Consequently, everybody in these spaces is being exposed to passive vape exposure. Customers,  including children and babies, are being exposed in their public spaces, enclosed or otherwise. And employees are being exposed in their workplace, which is a breach of Health and Safety. The situation needs to be addressed.

As a person who has a severe allergy, passive vape exposure is affecting my job as a bus driver, and also affects my social life as I cannot risk the exposure occurring within enclosed public venues, and its not just me. Everybody is being affected, whether they realise it or not.

This is actually a huge cause for concern regarding public health. The smoking of tobacco has been going on for millenia, where the dangers of both smoking and passive smoking are well documented. Vaping is relatively new,  becoming available commercially just 20 or so years ago.

We are navigating uncharted territory here. What academic research has revealed is that vapes contain not only nicotine but up to ten or so other substances known individualy to be harmful to human health. Quite what those substances turn into when they are mixed together and heated to the point of vaporisation on a nickel plate in a plastic tube is not known. Therefore the long term effects of inhaling that vapour are not known.

That said, if people want to vape, then like cigarette smoking, this is their own choice that they should be free to make for themselves. But doing so with complete disregard for how their choice affects those within their vicinity is not OK!

I think it essential that the government implement for the vaping phenomenon something akin to the "Smokefree" campaign, "Don't Make Them Breathe Your Smoke" which resulted in televised public health ads and billboards across the UK.

Further, the law needs to be more clear cut such as with cigarettes, where vaping be made explicitly illegal in publicly enclosed places, carrying penalties for both perpetrators, and for businesses that allow vaping to occur in their premises.

As well as criminalising vaping in enclosed public spaces, people need to be educated as to how the vapour from vapes presents a contamination of each and any airspace. Thus raising awareness to both encourage and embarrass people into being conscientious of how and where they vape, with a view to not allowing the vapour from their vapes to drift onto others when conducted in open air spaces.

When I address the problem of people vaping on my bus, the other passengers always thank me, telling me that they are so sick of having to put up with passive vape exposure. 

Does this describe how you feel?

Please add your name to this petition,  that these concerns be sent to Parliament to show the government that we, the public, consider passive vape exposure to be a problem which the government needs to address.