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There have been registered 15 victims who suffered because of a E-cigarette explosion.
STATES CHRONICLE – A man came to the hospital after his E-cigarette exploded in his mouth causing severe burns of the skin and damaging his teeth. Dr. Elisha Brownson was terrified to see the man in such a bad shape. She immediately sent him to trauma for intensive care. This doctor is specialized to treat burns, but what had this young man experienced was beyond her understanding. She couldn’t figure it out how could that mechanism provoke such a severe injury to the victim.
Unfortunately, this was not the only case. Vaping devices seemed to cause a whole lot of victims who came into the hospital. Every month, at least two patients who experienced such horror were coming in for treatment at the University of Washington Medicine Regional Burn Center. Dr. Brownson and her team got familiar with these cases.
Reporters have published 15 stories of this kind in the magazine New England Journal of Medicine. The patients were injured because of the explosions caused by their E-cigarette. The battery of this gadgets works on Lithium-ion to heat the liquid which will get inhaled by the smoker. Apparently, the E-cigarette is not safer than a regular cigarette in any way.
If the lithium-ion batteries overheat, it could be very dangerous. When “thermal runaway” occurs, they explode causing horrible injuries. From October 2015 to June this year, fifteen E-cigarette explosion cases have been registered. The 80 percent of patients who visited the trauma unit of the UW burn center have suffered burns caused by flames, and 33 percent had injuries provoked by chemical substances present in the alkali elements of the batteries. Moreover, 27 percent of the patients got blast injuries.
According to the report, 53 percent of the injuries produced by the E-cigarette were on thighs or legs. In 33 percent of the cases, burns were registered on hands. The faces of the victims were affected in 20 percent of the explosions.
The damages caused by these devices are terrible. Some of the victims were affected forever, being disfigured. In other cases, patients’ physical ability was impaired. People experiencing this type of explosions lost their teeth and part of the soft tissue, being left with a scar for the rest of their life.
Do you still think the E-cigarette is safer than the normal one? Isn’t it best to gave up smoking for good, without trying to replace regular cigarettes?
Image source: flickr
