A Dire Warning on Vaping Prodcuts
Friday, August 30th, 2019 -- 12:06 PM
(WRN) -If you're vaping products containing THC, be advised that there's no way of knowing what's in them.John Meiman is Chief Medical Officer with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, which is advising people to stop vaping such products
"Because it's not a legal product, there's no regulation that could . . . potentially control what can be in those products. We don't know what chemicals could be in there, we don't know if any of them could be causing illness, and becausew they're unregulated there's no way that we can insurre that there's safety."
Meiman encourages people to stay away from the THC products.
"We're having a number of cases reported to us with fairly severe lung illnesses that have been linked to vaping. And based on all the information we've gathered, we've seen a large number of people, the vast majority of reported using THC containing products, and we've encouraged people to stay away from those."
More than two dozen people in Wisconsin have been hospitalized with severe chemical pneumonia, or lung inflammation.
"People have complained of feeling short of breath, occasionally they'll have fever, sometimes weight loss, along with chills. And then sone significant number . . . may also have nausea and vomiting. These symptoms in some cases have occurred fairly quickly over a matter of days, in other cases they may have occurred over a matter of weeks."
If you're vaping products containing THC, be advised that there's no way of knowing what's in them.
"Because it's not a legal product, there's no regulation that could . . . potentially control what can be in those products. We don't know what chemicals could be in there, we don't know if any of them could be causing illness, and because they're unregulated there's no way that we can insure that there's safety."
Because vaping products containing THC are not legal in Wisconsin, they're also not regulated.
"Typically products that are illegal like this can be obtained from friends, they can be obtained from dealers, in rare instances they can be obtained from stores. There's no real commonality to it."
One death in Illinois has been linked to vaping, and doctors nationwide have been seeing more patients with severe lung disease tied to use of e-cigarettes.
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