Vaping-Related Lung Injuries Declining, As CDC Confirms Vitamin E Acetate As Main Culprit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A health-surveillance system put in place after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 has been used to pinpoint the cause of the vaping-related lung injuries that have killed 54 Americans and sent more than 2,500 people to the hospital. Using this system, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that the lung injuries rose sharply in June of this year. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director, says this sharp spike strongly points to a single culprit for most of these cases: vitamin E acetate, an additive found in illicit cannabis-containing vapes. Emergency-room doctors in Wisconsin first noticed an outbreak of these lung injuries in June. They alerted state and federal health officials, who quickly started investigating the extent of the outbreak as they looked for what could be causing it. It was important to understand the timing of the outbreak as part of this investigation. Health officials wanted to know when exactly the problems first cropped up, and whether they had missed many cases before those initial reports. That's why they turned to the surveillance data, collected from more than 3,200 emergency rooms from most states. They found a gradual increase in emergency-room visits among people who vaped or used e-cigarettes, starting in January of 2017. Narrowing their search to people under the age of 35, they detected a sharp spike in June of 2019 -- the same time that the doctors in Wisconsin reported their first cases. The number of cases climbed from June into September, when they peaked. They have since declined, but the CDC still reports about 100 cases a week, and the death toll continues to tick up.

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