You bet, Natbone ! While there truly are socio-political forces at play, and all claims should be viewed and considered carefully, one can potentially learn and hopefully make progress towards discerning a bit here and there from all kinds of sources. We all operate with confirmation (as well as non-confirmation) biases - and many sources of information are unlikely to neatly fit into simplistic pre-ceptions, making things complex.
I see that Erythropel, et al have just published an analysis of such (room temperature, rather than heated) e-juice chemical reaction products found in certain JUUL e-juice flavors. Unfortunately, it is behind a pay-wall (which I feel can be a way of controlling information) - but this NPR article talks just a bit about it. The NPR article is typical of a trend of rather poorly-sourced and investigated articles concerning “medicinal science” - where the (socio-politically deemed to be) demonized substances of the hour (be they pharmaceutical Opioids, or Nicotine, or any molecule considered to induce “states of psychological well being”) are reported on in a breathless (and all too often “brainless”) manner. Nothing terrifies us as do our own “pleasures”.
I tire of (even NPR) thriving on vague and ominous references - that when followed, provide little in the way of distinct thus reliable source-information. A good example is NPR’s refererence to the recent Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin announcement that eight teenagers had been hospitalized with “seriously damaged lungs” over the month of July. These things are becoming click-bait feeding-frenzies - revealing the popularly infused fashionable socio-political prejudices of the day. Rationality cedes to hysterical moralizing rituals - all too often idiotically divorced from, and quite “orthagonal” to, serious and real pharmacology and toxicology.
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All that being said, I try to take an active interest in my health (after 48 years of stoggies just about took me out completely around a year ago). It does seem that the various sugars that give tobacco as well as the synthetic flavorings their tastes are not free from involving a relatively large array of chemical by-products warranting legitimate cautions - particularly in cases where vaping coil-wick interfaces exceed ~200 *C. My new Pico 25 (in TC mode) is teaching me more specifics about temperatures reached to achieve desired (in my case, NET juice) “flavor”. Yes, (relatively so) less dangerous than tobacco combustion - but it seems that inhaling pleasureful “sugar fumes” (particularly with compromised lungs) is not without possible risks ?
I am discovering (from Pico 25 temperature data when using my Kayfun 5 RTA) that my Sigelei 30W mini (with 30 Hz PWM) provides it’s NET-juice calibrated pleasures by appearing to take coil-wick temperatures above 200 *C () … however, it also seems (in the case of my NET-juice) it is most pleasureful (in the course of a puff) to come up from from below a coil-wick interface temperature of around 160 *C (where many of the sugar-related molecules likely begin to decompose). It seems as if newly “busted up” flavor molecules is a part of the pleasures surrounding perception of “flavor” ? If the (average) coil-wick interface temperature remains above that “temperature transition area”, then taste experience becomes “bland”.
Had not considered, but now realize the extent of chemical activities (also) proceeding while coil-wick interface cools between puffs, and remaining at elevated temperatures around (and to some extent below) 100 *C. Given that it makes a great deal of sense to restrict coil-wick interface temperatures to less than Nicotine boiling/decomposition ~247 *C, I’m not sure that I really understand blasting things with “giga-watts”. Sure, the coil-wick interface warms faster initially - but once (by some means) limited, the average coil-wick interface temperature still (at least it seems in the case of my NET juices) needs to cool-off back to lower temperatures before my next puff (in the interest of “flavor”) - and the larger the composite coil-mass, the longer that cool-down takes to occur. My personal approach is to minimize power and maximize Nicotine concentration. The multiplicative product of Watts times Nicotine (in mg/ml) that (in my own experience) satisfies is ~111. Increasing Nicotine concentration does not require waiting around for coils to cool off, and it appears to be cheaper as well as likely safer than ginormous brute-force battery power solutions !