New, urgent warning about the ‘hidden risk' of e-cigarettes and vapes issued by scientists
Research shows that most adult smokers who try vaping end up using both, while many teens who never smoked are getting hooked on nicotine through vaping.
Roughly 11 million Americans vape regularly, and though vapes are still considered less harmful than cigarettes because they don't burn tobacco — the source of tar and many carcinogens — mounting evidence shows they're far from safe.
A new study — published in the journal ACS Central Science — revealed that e-cigarettes release a shocking amount of toxic metals.
Andrey Popov – stock.adobe.com
A new study — published Wednesday in the journal ACS Central Science — revealed that e-cigarettes release a shocking amount of toxic metals, with some producing more lead in a day's use than nearly 20 packs of traditional cigarettes.
'Our study highlights the hidden risk of these new and popular disposable electronic cigarettes — with hazardous levels of neurotoxic lead and carcinogenic nickel and antimony — which stresses the need for urgency in enforcement,' senior author Brett Poulin, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Toxicology, said in a statement.
'These risks are not just worse than other e-cigarettes but worse in some cases than traditional cigarettes,' Poulin added.
The research was led by Mark Salazar, a PhD candidate in Poulin's lab, who wanted to know more about what his friend — a vaper — was putting into his body.
When he tested the disposable vape pod in the lab, he was stunned by the results.
'When I first saw the lead concentrations, they were so high I thought our instrument was broken,' Salazar said. 'That sparked us into looking further into these disposables.'
'When I first saw the lead concentrations, they were so high I thought our instrument was broken,' one researcher said.
fotofabrika – stock.adobe.com
Researchers took a good, hard look into seven types of disposable devices from three of the most popular brands — Esco Bar, Flum Pebble and ELF Bar.
They discovered 'these disposable devices have toxins already present in the e-liquid, or they're leaching quite extensively from their components into e-liquids and ultimately transferred to the smoke,' Salazar said.
Some of the devices contained nickel and antimony levels that could increase the risk of cancer, as well as lead and nickel emissions that could lead to brain and lung damage.
Equally worrying is that the newer, disposable vapes seemed to emit more toxic metals than earlier, refillable vapes.
The researchers urged more research and regulation around e-cigarettes, especially because the market is outpacing the science.
While New York and the federal government restricted the sale of flavored e-cigarettes or vapes in 2020, the ban has not really been enforced — and new e-cigarette products are continuously emerging.
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Scientific American
27 minutes ago
- Scientific American
Can Weather Really Trigger a Migraine?
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. 'Is it just me, or is there a storm coming?' If you are one of the 39 million Americans in the U.S. living with migraines, there's a good chance an intense headache will begin when the weather shifts. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. You aren't alone. Studies find 30% to 50% of people with migraines identify some type of weather change as a trigger, making it the most commonly reported migraine source. Yet, it's also one of the most puzzling. Some people are more sensitive to weather As a neurologist and headache specialist practicing in Colorado, a place with frequent weather shifts, patients often tell me that weather is one of their biggest migraine triggers. The results can disrupt work, school and social plans, and create a sense of helplessness. Doctors still don't fully understand why some brains are more sensitive to environmental changes. What we do know is that people with migraines have especially sensitive nervous systems, and that certain environmental changes – like shifts in air pressure, temperature, humidity and air quality – can activate pathways in the brain that lead to pain. Key ways weather can trigger migraines Weather triggers can vary from person to person, but there are a few common migraine culprits: Barometric pressure changes, or changes in atmospheric pressure, are among the most commonly cited triggers. When a storm system moves in, the air pressure drops. Some scientists believe this change may affect the pressure inside your head or how blood vessels in your brain dilate and constrict. One theory is that changes in barometric pressure may cause a small imbalance in the pressure between the inside of your skull and the outside environment. That might directly stimulate pain-sensitive nerves in the head, triggering inflammation and the start of a migraine. Others point to inflammation, the way the brain processes sensory input, and changes in serotonin levels – which play a key role in activating migraine. Temperature extremes, with very hot or very cold days, or sudden changes in temperature, can throw off the body's internal balance. High humidity or rapid shifts in moisture levels can have a similar effect. Air pollutants like ozone and nitrogen dioxide can cause inflammation in the nerves that play a role in migraines. Bright sunlight can also be especially bothersome, likely due to heightened sensitivity to light and an overactive visual processing system in the brain. Lightning and strong winds may also be linked to migraine attacks in certain individuals. In short, weather changes can act as stressors on a brain that's already wired to be more sensitive. The exact triggers and responses vary from person to person, but the research suggests that the interaction between weather and our biology plays a significant role for a subset of patients with migraines. Steps you can take to reduce the pain You can't change the weather, but you can be proactive. Here are a few tips to help weather-proof your migraine routine: Track your migraines and watch the forecast: Use a migraine diary or app to track when attacks occur, along with weather conditions. Patterns may emerge, such as attacks a day before rain or during temperature changes, that will allow you to adjust your schedule or medication plan. Develop healthy eating, sleeping and exercise habits: Dehydration, poor sleep and skipped meals can magnify the effects of weather triggers, so keeping your body on an even keel helps reduce vulnerability. Regular exercise and a healthy diet can also help. Create a migraine-friendly environment: On days when the sun is harsh or the humidity is high, stay inside. Sunglasses, eye masks or even blue-light glasses can be helpful. Some people find that certain earplugs are able to reduce pressure changes felt in the middle ear. Try meditation, mindfulness techniques or biofeedback, which teaches people to moderate their physiological responses, such as muscle responses and breathing. These strategies can help your nervous system become less reactive over time, which can be especially helpful when dealing with uncontrollable triggers like weather. Consider pretreatment: If you know a storm is likely to trigger your migraines, you can keep rescue medications close by or even preemptively treat yourself during weather events. Look into preventive treatment: If weather triggers frequent migraines, talk to your health care provider about preventive treatments – medications, supplements or neuromodulation devices – which can be used on a regular basis to reduce migraine occurrence. The bigger picture It's important to remember that while weather can be a trigger, it's rarely the only one. Migraine is usually the result of a perfect storm of factors: genetic susceptibility, hormones, stress, sleep, food and, yes, the weather. That's why identifying your personal triggers and building a plan, if necessary, with the support of a medical provider, can make a big difference in managing migraines. Weather-related migraine can be one of the most frustrating triggers because it feels completely out of your hands. However, with knowledge, tracking and the right treatment strategies, you can take back a sense of control.
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
How This New Biotech Billionaire Outmaneuvered Merck In China
M ichelle Xia spent a dozen years in research and biotech in the U.S. before relocating back to her native China for a job at American life sciences contract research company Crown Bioscience. It didn't take long for her to realize that patients in her home country needed to wait a much longer time than Americans to get the newest and best medicines. Back then, she says, it took eight to ten years for drugs that had been approved in the U.S. to become available in China. 'There was not much innovation in China' in drug development then, Xia recalls. China was producing copies of U.S. drugs, but with a big lag time. Armed with the ambition to change that and ample industry experience, she launched a biotech company in 2012 with two former Crown Bioscience colleagues and one other cofounder in the southern city of Zhongshan–west of Hong Kong. She took the lead as CEO, chairwoman and president of the startup, which they named Akeso–after a Greek goddess of healing. Now, five years after taking Akeso public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the company's standout lung cancer drug has captured outsized attention in the pharmaceutical world. In a Phase 3 trial in China last year comparing Akeso's drug ivonescimab to Merck's Keytruda–the world's best-selling drug, with nearly $30 billion in 2024 sales–the Akeso drug outperformed Keytruda. The fact that a drug from a little known Chinese firm beat Merck's bestseller has led to a runup in Akeso's shares, which nearly tripled in value in the past year. That has turned 58-year-old Xia into a billionaire–with a $1.2 billion fortune, based on her and her family's 8.5% stake in the company, Forbes estimates. She is one of just nine Chinese women billionaires in healthcare (including two who inherited their fortunes)–and one of 13 self-made women billionaires in healthcare globally. More important to Xia is that her company has been an innovator. For its much-heralded cancer compound, Akeso combined two existing methods into one injectable drug: stimulating the immune system to attack the cancer cells and starving the cancer by cutting off the blood supply to the tumors. 'Usually that strategy [of combining two methods] is significantly ignored,' says Robert Booth, a former senior scientific executive at Roche and other firms and now a board member at Summit Therapeutics, which in 2022 licensed ivonescimab from Akeso for markets including the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. 'Michelle wasn't afraid to try that. She is confident in her own scientific judgement.' Akeso's achievements are part of a recent wave of success for Chinese biopharma companies. Nearly one-third of drug candidates licensed by large pharmaceutical firms came from Chinese companies last year, up from zero in 2019, according to research firm DealForma. In April, a U.S. congressional commission, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, warned in a report that the U.S. risks losing its edge in biotech–and that the government should put $15 billion in funding over five years to support biotech research and manufacturing. 'Over the past five years, China has transitioned from being a nice to watch market to a central pillar of global biopharma innovation,' PwC's pharmaceutical and life science deals leader Roel van den Akker wrote in May. Some of that progress is fueled by Chinese scientists who studied or worked in the U.S. and then moved back to China– just like Xia did. Xia, who uses her given first name, Yu, in China, grew up in Gansu province in the country's northwest, the daughter of two university-educated engineers. After getting a degree in biochemistry at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in 1988, she obtained a scholarship and got a doctorate in molecular biology and microbiology from Newcastle University in the U.K. In 1996, she moved to the U.S. to do cancer research in a lab at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, where she had some friends. Four years later she took a job at Celera Genomics–a company best known for its founder, Craig Venter, and his work on the first draft sequence of the human genome. Summit Therapeutics' board member Booth became chief scientific officer of Celera in 2002 and organized research committee meetings that involved senior scientists, in part to train the younger staff. 'Michelle was probably the most junior scientist to join those meetings. She would ask the most probing questions,' he recalls. Booth also set her to work using a complicated assay–a laboratory test employed in drug development–that had taken four very experienced scientists 10 weeks to get it to work when he was at Roche. 'I expected it to take months, but in two weeks she was producing good, reproducible results,'' he says. 'She was a very accomplished scientist, highly productive, and humble.' She later went on to work at Bayer and two other companies, and while in America obtained U.S. citizenship. Xia put her results-oriented focus to work when she and her Chinese colleagues launched Akeso. At the outset, she and her partners were determined to recruit the best university graduates, so they traveled 50 miles to Guangzhou—home to several good universities—to interview students in a conference room at a hospital where a friend worked, she says via Zoom from China, smiling at the memory. Finding private investors was also difficult at first, but Xia's team initially raised about $3 million from wealthy southern Chinese entrepreneurs. In 2015, Xia heard that pharma giant Merck was looking to license an immunotherapy drug candidate to target a protein called CTLA-4. It turned out that Akeso had one in early stage development. Xia, who had met someone from Merck's business development team at a conference, reached out and ended up arranging a deal to license Akeso's drug candidate to Merck for $200 million. It was the first time a Chinese company licensed a lab-developed protein (called a monoclonal antibody) to a global big pharma firm. 'That was a very good validation for us,' Xia recalls. 'We won [that deal] because of our quality and our speed.' Xia has organized Akeso to emphasize scientific advances, with nearly a third of the company's 3,500 employees working in research and development. 'We focus on science and biology and the most advanced technology,' says Xia. 'I think that makes the difference.' Since it was founded 13 years ago, Akeso has gotten five of its drugs approved by China's regulator–including its Keytruda competitor, ivonescimab. Two more drugs it developed and licensed to other companies in China were also approved. Meanwhile, another of its drugs, to treat a rare form of head and neck cancer called nasopharyngeal cancer, was also approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in April. Revenue for the company is expected to grow 59% this year to nearly $470 million, while it's likely to post a net loss of $27 million, according to analysts at Hong Kong-based CMB International. The biggest factor putting Akeso into the spotlight of global pharma was its development of cancer drug ivonescimab. While Akeso had advanced the drug to Phase 3 trials and had presented promising research at ASCO, the big annual oncology conference, in 2022 big pharma was hesitant to do deals with Chinese companies. Says Ken Clark, a longtime biotech lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and a board member of Summit Therapeutics, 'All of the pharma companies passed on ivonescimab primarily because they didn't believe the data.' Luckily for Akeso, Summit's co-CEOs Maky Zanganeh and Bob Duggan, both now U.S. billionaires, had instructed their small team that same year to scour the globe for a drug in Phase 3 trials to license. One executive who was originally from China, Fong Clow, suggested looking there, and within months the Summit team had narrowed their focus to Akeso's drug. It turned out that Xia, Zanganeh and Duggan had a common tie: A drug candidate that Xia had worked on at Celera Genomics in the early 2000s was later purchased by Pharmacyclics, Duggan and Zanganeh's previous biotech company. Under their leadership, Pharmacyclics took the drug–called Imbruvica–through to FDA approval in 2013 for treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the most common form of leukemia. It became a blockbuster, and drug giant AbbVie bought Pharmacyclics for $21 billion in 2015. That connection helped give Xia confidence in Zanganeh and Duggan, both of whom had unorthodox backgrounds for biopharma executives: Zanganeh started as a dentist and Duggan, a serial entrepreneur, had run a cookie company, a needlepoint kit seller and more before investing in a robotic surgical company, where he met Zanganeh. The two teams soon recognized they both had entrepreneurial cultures. 'They found me, and I think it's a perfect fit,' says Xia. Akeso and Summit inked their licensing deal in December 2022, with Summit agreeing to pay $500 million upfront plus up to $4.5 billion in potential milestone payments. (Summit is now conducting its own Phase 3 trials of the Akeso drug in order to get approval from the U.S. FDA.) Xia joined Summit's board the next month. 'From the start, she built a company that could handle every step of drug development—from discovery to manufacturing—all under one roof. This gave Akeso speed, flexibility, and control in an industry where timing is everything,' Zanganeh says via text message. At a lung cancer conference in San Diego in September last year, Akeso announced the results of its head to head Phase 3 clinical trial with Merck's Keytruda for patients with a specific type of lung cancer. The patients on Akeso's drug went a median 11.1 months before the cancer returned, compared to 5.8 months for those taking Keytruda. Akeso's stock jumped 16% on the news the next day. Friends from around China and the U.S. reached out to congratulate Xia. Xia has even bigger goals. Akeso already has more than a dozen drug candidates it developed in clinical trials, and she wants to push the company beyond cancer drugs to pursue treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases, particularly as China's population ages. That means investing in new technology and new types of drugs, all with the goal of serving patients. Says Xia: 'We want to join the club and become a great company.' More from Forbes Forbes This AI Founder Became A Billionaire By Building ChatGPT For Doctors By Amy Feldman Forbes How The Healthcare Industry Can Address Delays In Psychiatric Care By Amanda Marlar Forbes Meet India's Self-Made Biologics Brewmaster Billionaire By Amy Feldman Forbes Catalysts In Innovation: A Doctor's Dream Impacts Healthcare By Hansa Bhargava
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
80 years later, victims of ‘first atom bomb' will soon be eligible for reparations
More Americans are now eligible for compensation for health problems linked to radiation exposure from the atomic weapons program. A bright, blinding light flashed above New Mexico's Jornada del Muerto desert at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945. The thunderous roar that followed jolted 14-year-old Jess Gililland awake on the porch of his family's ranch 27 miles away. Gililland didn't know it yet, but the U.S. Army had just detonated the world's first-ever nuclear weapon. In the hours and days after the blast, radioactive dust would begin to coat roofs, clotheslines, crops, animals and the ground near Gililland's family home. As the years passed, almost all his family members and neighbors became sick, often with rare forms of cancer. The federal government never warned them about the bomb test, never evacuated them after the blast, or advised them about the potential health consequences of nuclear fallout. Those who lived downwind of the atom bomb say they've never received much recognition – until now. Eight decades after the Manhattan Project's Trinity Test, generations of New Mexicans' who've suffered health problems from the nuclear fallout will soon be eligible to receive compensation. A measure in the recently enacted Republican tax bill expands the pool of Americans eligible for a program that compensates people who have health problems linked to radiation exposure from the atomic weapons program, including uranium miners and downwinders. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, first passed in 1990, previously only applied to people in certain parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, but didn't include those who were potentially impacted by the Trinity Test in New Mexico, or living on Navajo lands in Arizona, among other areas. For people in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin, the money will make a world of difference, Gililland's 71-year-old daughter, Edna Kay Hinkle, said. 'The people around here, a lot of them are really poor. They couldn't afford gas to go to Las Cruces or Albuquerque (to get treatment),' said Hinkle, who has also battled multiple types of cancer. 'There's people that it means millions, multi-millions, to them.' The Trinity Test's secret fallout Scientists chose to conduct the Trinity Test at the Alamogordo Bombing Range for the area's relative seclusion and predictable winds, which they believed would limit the spread of radiation over populated areas, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage. Army officers pinpointed where thousands of people lived within the 40-mile radius of the test site and prepared emergency evacuation plans. But they never used them. After the test, the military described the giant blast people saw as an accident involving ammunition and pyrotechnics. The federal government didn't reveal the real cause, even to those in the area who had watched the mushroom cloud, until a month later, when the nation dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By then, those living near the test site had already ingested the radiated material. In a 2015 letter, a man named Henry Herrera, who was 11 years old at the time of Trinity, recounted watching a cloud of black ash fall across his town, including on the clothing his mother had hung outside to dry in the hours after the explosion. 'This filth landed all over our town (and) covered our village with radiation,' wrote Herrera, who passed away in 2022 at age 87. 'Our water was contaminated because all we had was rainwater from the cistern and ditch water. … Everything we consumed was filled with radiation.' The government publicly downplayed the potential consequences of the nuclear bomb test for people living in the Tularosa Basin, despite internal concerns. Five days after Trinity, physicist Stafford Warren wrote a letter to Army Gen. Leslie Groves explaining that high levels of radiation were found 'near a lot of houses.' Warren suggested future tests be conducted 150 miles away from any populated area. Hundreds of thousands of people lived within the 150-mile radius of Trinity. Years later, a health care provider named Kathryn Behnke wrote to Warren from Roswell, New Mexico, explaining that there were 'about 35 infant deaths' in the city in the month after the atomic test. Warren's medical assistant denied that there might be a connection to the testing in his response back to Behnke. But unpublished data from the New Mexico Health Department showed that infant deaths increased by 38% in 1945, compared with 1946, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Radioactive fallout from the test had landed in high densities across New Mexico and Nevada. Fallout from the more than 100 other nuclear tests the government conducted in the years after reached 46 of the 48 contiguous states, along with Mexico and Canada, according to a 2023 study published by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Colorado Boulder. Thousands eligible for compensation The exact number of people eligible for nuclear-weapons-related radiation compensation across the nation remains unknown. But Tina Cordova, who cofounded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said she estimates upward of 10,000 people have had health impacts related to the Trinity Test. The village of Tularosa alone could generate 'thousands of claims out of a town that has consistently had a population of around 3,000,' Cordova said, noting that generations of people who've moved away still have lingering health problems. Thousands more across other states could be eligible, too. Between 1951 and 1958, the United States conducted 188 nuclear tests out West. At the military's Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of Las Vegas, dozens of nuclear tests were conducted underground each year between 1963 and 1992, according to the Department of Defense. During roughly the same time frame, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo Nation lands to build nuclear weapons. An estimated 4,000 Navajo labored in more than 1,000 mines, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said. Others lived in close proximity. Today, hundreds of abandoned uranium mines remain on the tribe's land and may still be polluting water sources and exposing residents to harmful radiation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Nygren called the expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act a 'victory' for the Navajo. Much like Trinity downwinders, those living on tribe lands were for decades not eligible for compensation. The original act only included people in specific counties across Arizona, Nevada, and Utah who were present when the atomic testing took place and who developed specific types of cancer. The expansion passed in the Republican tax bill extends benefits to include all downwinders in Utah, New Mexico and Idaho, and more living in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska. Uranium miners in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas will also be covered. Bernice Gutierrez, a downwinder who was born in Carrizozo, New Mexico, eight days before the Trinity Test, believes money from the program could be an 'economic boom' for communities that have long suffered from radiation-related health impacts. But she and other downwinders have said there is still more work to be done. The RECA reauthorization leaves out people in some parts of Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, Guam, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington state. The extension is also set to expire in two years, leaving concern that some won't be able to apply in time, Gutierrez said. 'Can you imagine 80 years worth of illness and death in New Mexico?' And we have a two-year time frame in which to gather all these applications?' said Gutierrez, who has more than 40 family members who've experienced what they believe to be radiation-related sicknesses. 'It just doesn't end for us' Downwinders are only eligible for compensation if they lived in one of the affected areas when tests were being conducted between 1945 and 1962. Otherwise, if an eligible person has already passed away, their families may be able to file a claim to receive up to $25,000. The National Cancer Institute in 2020 said it found no evidence transgenerational health effects occurred as a result of the test. The study also said there remain 'great uncertainty in the estimates of radiation doses and number of cancer cases possibly attributable to the test.' But Cordova and other downwinders believe the radiation from the blast mutated their ancestors' DNA, making their children and grandchildren more susceptible to cancers and other diseases. Five generations of Cordova's family have had cancer, dating back to 1955. Her 24-year-old niece was the latest to be diagnosed this year. 'It just doesn't end for us.' Cordova said. 'I always say we bury somebody, and someone else is diagnosed. And that is true and has been true in my family forever.' One of her cousins was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor several decades ago, and traveled around the country to find treatment. He died in October of compounding health problems. Two months later, Cordova said her brother was diagnosed with cancer. 'This is a legacy that we will carry forever. Our bodies bear the remnants of the Trinity bomb.'
