Did you ever wonder if it was possible from overdosing on vaping? Well, to quickly give away the answer, it’s a big no. Although nicotine is an extremely potent poison, the amount inhaled from vapor is too miniscule to cause a threat as we will explain in detail. On the other hand, it is true that you must carefully handle e-liquid as it represents a concentrated form of nicotine base. It is said to take between 500 to 1000mg of nicotine to lethally overdose, so is it possible to reach that amount by vaping?
To know if it is possible to ingest over 500 – 1000mg of nicotine by vaping, we would first need to measure exactly how much nicotine is taken in with vapor produced by e-cigarettes and personal vaporizers. We recently covered such a topic, where first generation styled compact electronic cigarettes we’re put against a bigger tank system vaporizer with more power, to see just how much nicotine intake each device offered. The study also compared the devices to an analogue tobacco cigarette and tobacco smoking was found to deliver higher nicotine content than any vaporizer. An important finding of the study is that tobacco smoking was found to deliver the nicotine much faster than a vaporizer.
Now let’s look at that figure of 500mg to 1000mg which represents a lethal dose of nicotine. One cigarette constitutes around 24-30mg of nicotine, which means it would require you to quickly smoke 16 to 32 or more cigarettes in a very short span of time to amount to those numbers. As most of you can realize, some smokers burn through two packs a day, being a total of about 50 cigarettes. That puts into context the actual amount of concentrated nicotine required to really overdose. One would become very sick before even smoking or vaping enough to get to those amounts in their bloodstream.
When it comes to inhaling vapor, the amount of nicotine delivered to the blood stream significantly drops as per the study done by Dr. Konstantinos. The measurements show that it would literally be impossible. It would require you to puff thousands and thousands of times in a non-stop manner to reach anything close to lethal amounts. You would certainly also get sick and tired before even getting close. To put it into numbers, it could take anywhere from 5000 to 7000 puffs to reach those high levels. If you we’re to take 20 puffs per hour, that would only equate to 480 puffs, if you double that, it’s still under 1000 puffs and that is considering that you don’t sleep and puff 40 times per hour. That is just unrealistic.
The risk remains in the e-liquid where the concentrated form can be ingested by your pet or children if not properly stored away. The same can happen and actually happens from eating and ingesting tobacco cigarettes and actually happens at a higher rate than e-liquid poisoning cases. Therefore, the concern remains around ensuring bottles of nicotine liquid are kept and stored away in the same manner as other dangerous products such as cleaning products or pharmaceutical drugs. Be safe every time and you will never have a bad vaping day!