So one thing that always strikes me about vaping is that we ignore the metal heater. It’ a coil of metal that glows, during which it will boil off metal atoms. After a while it has lost so much material that is breaks and needs to be replaced. That metal went into your lungs.
Does the heater really break by becoming so thin that it mechanically disconnects? I don’t use a vape but from coil replacement guides it sounds like people replace the coil because it begins to taste bad due to the burned stuff sticking to it.
Probably not much more healthy but I don’t really see how you would be ingesting much more metal from that compared to your metal frying pan for example.
Disposable vapes don't have this issue. <-period. you throw the pod away before any sort of degradation to the coil and the wick. That being said...
The coil becomes brittle from interacting with the liquid and usually breaks contact when refilling or if dropped. what actually happens is the wick goes bad or burns, and won't "wet" the coil anymore; or you use an e-liquid/e-juice with a lot of sweeteners and the coil gets caked with burnt sweetener and can't fire anymore.
But that's if you're negligent with a DIY or "hand wound" or "drip" vape, where you're using the same coil for a very long time (weeks, depending), and it depends on the liquid, the liquids that taste/smell like bakery/confections absolutely cover coils with gunk that you have to remove the wadding (usually cotton or silicone wicking material, unbleached), and do a dry-fire to burn all the junk off. This smells awful and i usually did it by hanging the thing out a car window and firing it just so i didn't have to smell it. I personally used specialty "wire" that's real thin wire that's twisted to make it thicker, both to make it handle more heat (lower resistance means more voltage can be put in) and last longer, due to less heat stress. 90% of the time when a coil broke for me, it broke where the coil connects to the leg that goes to the terminal block, and rarely the leg would snap at the terminal block instead of the coil, and maybe 2 times the coil broke somewhere along the length. in a little over a decade of use of "rebuildable drip atomizers."
The disposable and pod-based vapes don't have any of these issues because say 9000-18000 "puffs" of 0.5s or longer and you're supposed to dispose of it. With one of the RJR or PMJ vape brands, they're not refillable, so you just throw the pod away; with the "bar" vapes, you throw the whole bar, battery and all, in the trash.
I really advocate for the "refillable pod" and "drip" or "drip tank" vapes, just from an ecological standpoint. Uwell, VodPod(stylized and possibly spelled 'voopoo') make decent pod-based ones, where the device, a pack of 2 pods, and a bottle of e-liquid to fill it with cost about the same as a Vuze device and a 6-pack of pods for the Vuze. And if you're a "heavy user" a 6 pack is < 1 week of vaping; so hands down doing it with your own device and liquid is cheaper, for sure. additionally there's a difference between "mouth to lung" and "Direct to lung" vape devices/pods. MTL is like a cigarette, you draw into your mouth, then inhale into your lungs. DTL is like a hookah or bong, you "breathe" in through the device. I used to prefer DTL but i use MTL now. the vuze and other tiny pod disposable vapes are Mouth to Lung devices.
TL;dr: No. Generally the disposable ones from the two big tobacco companies are "safe" given the GP and your queries. the "bar" ones, like "elf bar" or whatever, i am not sure. There's been QC issues and other reported problems with that type, but they're generally <18000 "puffs" and that, in my opinion that borders on being "dumb". The big vapes you see people using? those are probably safer than even the RJR/PMJ ones, unless the tank is metal. Then you can't be sure, that's up to the user!
Note: the closest thing to vaping prior to vaping was a hookah vis-à-vis nicotine, and a nebulizer, vis-à-vis vaporizing "drugs." They even make things that vaporize marijuana, straight from a grinder, these days. But heating something to create a vapor to inhale isn't "new"!
In fact, the first "e-cig" i ever saw was used by a friend in 2009 or so, and he said it was sold as an "Portable Electronic Hookah". It was a DTL device, with a tank and replaceable wick/coil "cartridge". Most DTL are "replaceable cartridge coil/wick" tanks, and most MTL are "pods"
You do understand it’s a resistive heating element just like an electric baseboard heater or space heater? There’s no “metal atoms boiling off”, a typical alloy used for vape coils is Kanthal, which is iron/chromium/nickel which melts at 2,500F
You are not heating up the atomizer anywhere near that temperature with (2) 18650 cells. Coils are replaced when the cotton that surrounds them gets dirty and the vapor starts tasting bad.
What are you on about? Your premise is pure bunk. The metal doesn't glow in normal usage. Speaking from experience: if that happens, it's a terribly painful experience and nobody would enjoy it. Vape coils usually heat to under 205°C/400°F, enough to transform the liquid into vapor but far below the glow point of the metal alloy typically used (kanthal/FeCrAl or nichrome/NiCr). Replacement is necessary due to residue buildup from the liquid, not because the metal has become degraded.
That's correct, in normal use the coil (the term used for the metal) never glows, it's not even close to glow. This is because it is surrounded by cotton soaked in the liquid which always cools the coil and which produces the desired vapor. If the coil would ever start to glow this is called a "dry hit" and it usually happens if you failed to monitor there's enough liquid in the tank. In this case the cotton immediately starts to burn and believe me inhaling that is disgusting and you would immediately stop. In fact you even stop before that because if the cotton gets dry it stops tasting any good.
Vaping is (compared to actually smoking tabacco) definitely harm reduction and significantly less harmful (which doesn't mean its healthy and you should do it). Yet it is treated like smoking cigarettes by law. For example in Germany you have to pay tabacco tax on the base liquid (which doesn't even contain nicotine) if it is intended to be used in a vape (17 cents per milliliter) which increased the price of the base liquid from around 10€ to 170€. But the base liquid only consists of two things (propylene glycol and glycerol) and both those substances you can by cheaply in a vet doctors online shop for maybe 5€ each liter. It's ridiculous.
When i made my own i could make 500-700ml for $20. The expense is all up-front if you don't know what flavors you want or you want to experiment with recipes - the flavoring is relatively expensive if you want a lot of variety. If you're a "cherry cola" or "golden tobacco" sort, then the up front cost is about $40 (or was, 6 years ago), and you can make over a gallon of liquid at a strength of ~2.5% (25mg/l) off a single purchase of everything. you need 2 liters of PG, 1 liter of VG, and 1 liter of 100ml/l nicotine. then your flavoring.
anyhow, i buy juice now, too, but mine was better. I never used sweeteners. My current go-to is Naked Euro Gold 12mg, but i am on the hunt for a 25ml nicotine salt version of a similar flavor. (nicotine salt vs freebase nicotine, salt is more "mellow" and lets you put a higher concentration in, which translates directly to less use, as you're satiated much faster.)
they do not. Even hair dryer coils don't generally glow, and the old vapes used the same wires, at sub-1% of the wattage. 5-8W instead of 800-1500W. That wire was called "Kanthal", and for a while vapes went to nichrome and titanium and various other things. I am unsure what the "gold standard" is now, but i doubt it's still kanthal unless it's a cheap chinese vape "bar".
anyhow, as other people and myself said already, the metal never gets hot enough to incandesce, not even remotely close!
This is an example of how twins give us information when one variable is fixed - genetics. Can reciprocal information be found when observing the opposite: adoptees who share no genetic base but had the same upbringing in the same environment?
An interesting idea, but a big problem would be that the uterine environment is shared between twins, and so any contributions from that shared environment will not be disentangled in your proposed model.
You had food as a barbarian. Job wasn't needed because you weren't enslaved by your feudal lord, healthcare and education being the only benefits of civilization... largely benefits for the rich and not the peasantry I might add
The basis of so much of Microsoft's complacency (and why the MB Neo was such a nuke to the entry-level laptop market).
It's pretty terrible how much this kind of dynamic rules over tech. I'm not a 'capitalist', but god damn if competition isn't the most important thing to prevent total enshittification.
This strikes me as weird. In 92/93/94 I was on packet radio, a ham equivalent of digital lora which used hopping to get you to neighbouring countries. Most had 1200 baud, some 9600. I downloaded executables from bbs’es over the air and chatted with likeminded folks. Around that time we also had the first guest lectures about software defined radio with proof of concepts. I find it impossible to believe that a bunch of amateurs in EU were more digitally connected than the folks this thread talks about. Without a monthly payment, mind you.
Right, the capabilities were there. One question is what was realistic for an FBI agent relegated to the basement. I agree with the other poster that Mulder probably wouldn't receive government issued packet radios or even a laptop. He probably got an old IBM electric typewriter to go with his limbo office.
But, what was his pay? Could he have decided to equip himself, much like US servicemen were known to upgrade their own body armor, GPS, etc. in recent decades? The Lone Gunmen side characters surely must have known about all this stuff, and his character could have been informed of the options.
And, in the timeframe of the show, I know that US college professors and various "creatives" were buying the Apple PowerBook and using the online services I mentioned. They were not the executive class in terms of pay or prestige. But they saw the value, and prioritized the spend from their own modestly middle-class means.
I absolutely believe it! I’ve seen exactly one packet radio in my life, a giant rack mounted thing on a US Navy ship. It was neat tech but you’ve gotta admit it was far from ubiquitous. I think the modern analogy would be surprise that they don’t issue Meshtastic radios.
First and foremost, Mulder and Scully worked for an enormous federal agency. They have some pockets of incredibly high tech stuff. They don’t procure cutting edge gadgets for the average employee. Think of it like going to work at IBM or similar, where you get issued exactly the set of tools that your job description and organization say are required for your job. If that still says you need a Pentium 4 desktop and a BlackBerry, guess what’ll be in your cubicle on your first day at the office.
