Since electronic cigarettes deliver nicotine in the form of water vapor rather than burning tobacco, it’s easy for most people to imagine that vaping is more healthy than smoking. But is that necessarily true?

Vaping is still pretty new to the market, only having been around for about a decade or so. Since it hasn’t been part of the public as much as cigarette smoking, there’s a lot that people don’t know about it. Here, several aspects regarding the two habits smoking vs. vaping will be discussed to help you understand how they are similar or different.

This is one of the biggest questions throughout the vaping and smoking community. Previously, left un-answered due to the lack of research and statistics on the topic. Much has changed in the recent years, with many well-known researchers releasing papers on the subject to shed some light on the theories of others.

There are many aspects to be taken into consideration when making the comparison between vaping and smoking.  

The Chemicals

Whether you’re taking combusted smoke into your lungs or vapor, there are going to be some quite serious health implications that come along with it. The health implications of smoking are a lot more defined and outlined, with vaping being a little more mysterious in the long term. Here’s a summary of the most common health implications found by researchers for both smoking and vaping.                    

The process of smoking includes the combustion of tobacco; created out of thousands of chemicals including at least 70 that have a strong connection to cancer, referred to as “carcinogens”. Some of the most well-known chemicals include:

• Nicotine – The addictive chemical, gives the user the desire to want more. When people say they’re addicted to smoking, they’re addicted to nicotine.
• Hydrogen Cyanide
• Formaldehyde
• Lead
• Arsenic
• Ammonia
• Benzene
• Carbon Monoxide
• Nitrosamines
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

As mentioned above, many of the chemicals listed above have a strong connection to some leading health conditions, including; cancer, heart disease and lung disease. These chemical elements are not found during the process of creating a cigarette, the chemicals start to occur when the tobacco leaf is combusted, producing the “smoke” in smoking (Cancer.org, 2017).