Ok, thank you. Please, keep me posted.
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Ahh yes. A fair point. But consider this: Proportion must be factored in. You might eat a pastry, what % of it is likely canola oil? One might eat said pastry every day. Now what if instead you DRANK a 32oz. bottle of canola oil(a friend in high school would do this for $20 or on a dare). How much would you body enjoy that?
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@GVape1 Welcome to ELR. I’m from MA and glad you decided to reach out. There are others from MA on other vape forums who are compiling lists of vendors who are currently shipping DIY supplies, hardware and ejuice. We, too, are PMing in order to not throw anyone under the bus. Feel free to PM me. Also, since VG/PG are common ingredients in soaps and other cosmetics you can easily find high quality products on Amazon or direct from the manufacturers. I usually buy Essential Depot VG and PG for their exceptional purity but there are many options. Hang in there my friend.
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thank you X 1000, and to the rest.
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And don’t forget, everyone. If you haven’t already, here are just a few links you can easily take action on. ejuices.com also has a long list of calls to action.
https://p2a.co/5ssX9ZE?dm_i=50Q8%2C7PAA%2C2RSFJX%2CSZ5L%2C1&resetcookie=1
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I think you have to understand that most people here will advise you on the side of caution when there is an unknown/little known substance contained in a flavouring as no one wants anyone to get ill. I mentioned it in another thread that there is no real need to trailblaze as there are 1000’s of flavours out there already that are GRAS when it comes to vaping.
I did a quick search on Xanthan Gum inhalation and not surprisingly nothing came up in regards to heating and inhaling, however, I did find this (only really relevant to the powder)
Respiratory Distress
Xanthan gum can be purchased in a powdered form for use in your kitchen. This low-density, fine powder has the ability to create a cloud in the air when being handled roughly. Inhaling xanthan gum may allow it to accumulate in your lungs, according to the World Health Organization. Eventually, xanthan gum may induce respiratory distress by making absorption of oxygen in your lungs difficult. The Xanthan Gum website reports that industrial workers who produce xanthan gum have experienced respiratory problems. You should be careful when handling food additives xanthan gum and try to be gentle when adding it to your recipes. Inhaling small amounts should not cause any problems; however, if you believe you are experiencing any breathing difficulties, consult your doctor.
from http://davidfood.over-blog.com/article-side-effects-of-xanthan-gum-104491603.html
Xanthan Gum is water-soluble as far as I can tell but personally I would do a bunch of research before I ever considered vaping it. As I previously mentioned I would stick to known brands and avoid anything that contains Xanthan Gum simply because it is an unknown.
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I 100% agree. All compounds should be guilty until proven innocent
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My experience with Xanthan gum, which corroborates your research: It’s basically cornstarch but something like 1000X more potent per weight. It honestly blows me away. Just the tiniest spec can be added to, say, a glass of water, and the whole thing turns into gel like substance. Also it takes forever to mix into water.
I found that it dissolves perfectly with zero fuss in pure PG… These experiments were not done in the context of vape juice… I’m actually surprised that it is an ingredient in these flavorings. But,
- It makes sense what they say about the powder, it is very powdery, and absurdly strong per weight
- but, you notice it is listed last in the ingredients list. I would wager if someone did a quantitative analysis on these mixtures, the proportion of xanthan gum would be perhaps in the parts per billion range.
The flavorings dont have a gel like consistency at all. And I noticed that when i tried to type in the flavorings name, it was auti suggested using the tool, so someone has put them in the database here before. I doubt anyone will be making my mix lol, but do you think I should take it down , or put a waring in the comments just in case?
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I would put it in the notes for the flavour itself and in the recipe (perhaps keeping the recipe private would be a good thing too) there are many people who would see it listed here an ignore any warnings and forge ahead.
I am not sure why they would use a thickening agent in a flavour at all but there is a lot more that I don’t know than stuff I do know 
. Yes you are probably right in saying it is a very small amount but for the sake of a few $ is it worth risking? IMHO no probably not.
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At the most basic level, it simply means that you really don’t have to dive into all of the chemistry (though it’s great if you can) of it all.
The easiest test (as I’ve read) is to simply take a fresh, clean paper towel, put it on a solid surface, put a few drops of whatever flavoring you have questions about, and let it naturally evaporate.
If it evaporates identically to water (EG: leaves no discolored residue once the paper towel is dry), then there should be no oil present.
If it looks like what’s on the left side, it’s a NO to using it for vaping.
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Smoky, please don’t take this the wrong way, but even before GVape1 replied, I was kind of puzzled by your response. (I read a bit further first for a change lol).
I have to disagree with you as well (in a general sense). There’s a lot of people who can’t pronounce propylene glycol (and that’s why they simplified it to PG in the first place I’d wager). Same for VG.
You’re in essence implying that more than a smattering of folks (even amongst our established mixing veterans) are more than passingly familiar with multiple, much less most, of the chemical components reflected in the TFA CAS number listings. Or even FLV (if they were to ever provide a similar resource) for that matter. And these are two of the most trusted points of origins that established mixers have.
It’s nothing to get defensive about hon. It’s merely the observation that John Q Public has no fucking clue about the chemistry of all of this. Nor do the majority want/need one. 
The point is, he/she (how I read it) was simply taking issue with (or at least, I am) the idea that “if you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it” is a bit “off the mark”.
I love/respect you, but you’re looking at the forest. You need to come back to the campfire, because you have plenty of great insight as well. 
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We avoid what we call “oils” but we are actually avoiding lipids in our flavorings, due to lipid pneumonia, which is like pneumonia that never goes away, ever. I’m a first semester chem student so my knowledge isn’t where yours is, but I think that essential oils like thc are not actually lipids, but they are lipid-soluble.
The weed industry avoids propylene glycol for one simple, stupid reason, and that is that it’s made in a lab and therefore not natural, so it must be bad for you. These people will tell you that mct oil or vitamin e must be better because it’s natural, most of them fail to realize that “chemicals” make up everything, not just things synthesized in a lab, so anything described as a chemical is automatically bad news.
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Actually Chemistry is not my proper discipline. I studied mostly Computer Science in school. However I’ve worked doing IT Systems support in labs and kind of love chemistry way more than computer stuff, since I don’t do it for a living, ya know.
This Lipid matter you bring up is interesting and helpful. I did a little bit of research and looks like we are both right. “essential oil” does not have a strict definition in chemistry, but generally means oils that are very volatile. Well in practice this little tidbit breaks it down nicely:
So, basically the difference between a cooking oil and an essential oil is their composition. Cooking oils are composed of tri-, di-, mono-glycerides which renders them a non-polar nature while essential oils are composed of volatile aromatic compounds like hydrocarbons, terpenes, phenylpropanoids, terpenoids and their oxygenated derivatives which renders them a polar nature.
Also from wikipedia or PubChem I read that propylene glycol is officially immiscible with heavy ‘cooking’ oils but it is miscible with essential oils. If anyone doesn’t know miscible is the same as ‘soluble’ but when describing two liquids, rather than a solid and a liquid. Oil and water are not miscible.
Generally one wouldn’t think to be concerned since essential oils, or their artificial approximations, are the basis of the world of flavoring.
chem heavy note: Interesting that essential oils are considered polar technically, since they certainly form a separate layer on top of water. However this does not surprise me since it’s so very very easy to co-dissolve them with water based substances. For example alcohol co-dissolves, and is the base for perfumes and most extracts.
Amen. I mentioned this up top somewhere, ha. The wizards over at sciencemadness.com term this “chemophobia”. It’s a hot sell since it persuades people to purchase insanely expensive super-critical CO2 extraction devices, since they are afraid of something sensible like ether or chloroform. THC I believe would fall under the heavy oil category because it, along with it’s cannabinoid isomers are triglycerides(right?) and actually have astronomically high boiling points(THC is 157C at .01 mmHG,)
So I speculate that much like the paper towel test mentioned above, the danger of vaping(technically an aerosol process, as opposed to say combustion reaction with cigarettes or distillation if there was no air flow) is that one will suck in an extremely water INsoluble liquid, coating their lungs. Another analogy would be like an oil spill in the ocean.
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Gotya. This is better than what I was thinking. It’s actually a very clever trick because to a small extent it utilizes the capillary ducts within a paper towel to separate mixed components if they are very different(chromatography is based on this idea, and I know this is not the forum for such discussion, it is the most universal method for testing and analyzing chemicals.) A safe DIYer , who shares their concoctions with others, would be a super hero DIY mixer if they could do their own chemical analysis of the flavorings, etc. Thanks for the inspiration!
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Is Flavorah going to let rebranding happen? Such as the way FA does it.
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You mean like to allow resellers to call it something else?
I am not sure at this time, but either you or I can ask 
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I’m just taking a guess. I saw you allude to something coming over at VU as well.
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I do relish (don’t vape relish, BTW) these threads that delve a bit deeper into the fancy-word aspects of vaping. As long as, of course, they do not devolve into weener-shakers where five dollar words are spent endlessly trying to show the other fellow that you’re the sharpest knife n the drawer. I think you understood my point about ingesting canola oil as a frying agent over vaping without the need for the drinking analogy. It is the part about the lungs being coated in oil that turns folks off of vaping ‘oils’.
But a stimulating thread nonetheless.
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This isn’t the thread for it @natbone… but there are a few things in the works, and we all will have to see how things play out. Let’s hope the bans bring about more education rather than to guess anything… 
Gosh knows we all need a bit of the smarts…
Time will tell what will happen! I can not wait… I hope it is good things coming our way… 
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Well fine, lol=D Surely you loved the oil tanker ocean spill analogy, at least?
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