Vaping vs. Smoking
Vaping skips the combustion, but not the risks.
Updated January 15, 2026 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
By Brian Coon, MA, LCAS, CCS, MAC with Becky Shipkosky
Back in 2023, Mark Salazar saw his friend smoking a disposable vape pod. This was his first exposure to e-cigarette products, and he was curious about it. Salazar happens to be a Ph.D.-candidate in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of California Davis, and he had a hunch there might be something of interest inside.
He took the device into the lab and tested it for metals. The results initially made him think his instrument was broken.
Over the next couple of years, Salazar and colleagues thoroughly analyzed metal and metalloid content in three popular disposables. They found that all three products leach lead, nickel, chromium, antimony, copper, and zinc at levels that “exceed acceptable non-cancer and cancer risk thresholds” for these elements (Salazar et al., 2025).
The disposable pods featured in Salazar’s study , published in July 2025, appear to emit more such toxins than earlier e-cigarette products, other disposable e-cigarettes , and traditional cigarettes. Meanwhile, disposable pods are the most popular type of vape device, and two of the three in the study are among the most popular with youth.
Vaping is a smokeless method of using nicotine, the toxic and addictive alkaloid found in tobacco. A vape device, or e-cigarette, consists of a battery, a metal heating element and a reservoir of carrier liquid. Additionally, a wick delivers the liquid to the heating element, and a firing mechanism delivers aerosol through a mouthpiece to be inhaled by the user.
To place vaping into context: it has emerged over the past two decades as an alternative to smoking, a tech-savvy substance delivery system, and a stealth-use product. It has been worryingly popular among teens and young adults. While just 6.5% of adults and 5.9% of teens in the U.S. report regular e-cigarette use (Vahratian et al., 2025), recent polling data , plus prevalence data in regions where the products were available just one to three years earlier, offer a sense of where we may be headed.
What We Know (and Don’t Know) About Vape Products
As so many products have, e-cigarettes became widely available to consumers long before the health impact was well understood. It still isn’t. Gaps in knowledge are commonly filled with optimistic assumptions, but as Carl Sagan pointed out: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We know that vape products contain dozens of chemicals, compared to 6500–7000 present in conventional cigarettes (Margham, 2010). We do not know the health effects of inhaling all of the chemicals in e-cigarettes.
We know that e-cigarette use causes respiratory, cardiovascular, and cellular inflammation (Effah et al., 2025; Tsai et al., 2020). We do not know which chemicals are responsible for these effects.
We know that vaping nicotine increases heart rate, blood pressure, and airway resistance (Royal College of Physicians, 2024). We do not know its impact on long-term cardiovascular health or cancer risk compared to those same risks for smokers.
We know that third-hand exposure from contact with materials that have absorbed cigarette smoke, like clothing or furniture, presents risks to non-users, especially children and pets . We do not know the extent of the risk with e-cigarette residue, how it compares to that of third-hand cigarette smoke, or which chemicals might cause harm (Stracci et al., 2025).
Popular Myths and Truths About Vaping
Let’s check what we’ve heard and what we think we know against the science.
Myth: Vaping is harmless water vapor. It is not smoke, which eliminates the combustion aspect of smoking's harms. But it's also not vapor. Rather it is an aerosol that contains dozens of chemicals, including heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as formaldehyde and benzene (Margham, 2010). Vaping is linked to an increased risk for several acute and chronic conditions, along with cancer-related biomarkers (Kundu et al., 2025).
Partial truth: Vaping is less harmful than smoking. The absence of combustion and the thousands of cigarette chemicals not found in vape products go a long way towards validating this argument. And vapers who don’t smoke have fewer carcinogenic chemicals in their urine and breath than smokers. But, due to the lack of long-term studies, not enough is known about long-term health impact. Furthermore, vaping presents some unique risks compared to smoking:
Possible truth, with caveats: E-cigarettes are an effective smoking cessation method. Probably effective, maybe safe . Based on currently available evidence, it seems that smoking cessation is where vaping may stand out as a force for good. A review of controlled and uncontrolled trials found that nicotine e-cigarettes facilitated higher quit rates than other nicotine-replacements, such as chewing gum and patches (Lindson et al., 2024). There are a few important caveats, though. E-cigarettes are not approved by the FDA as a cessation method, no manufacturers are seeking approval for this use, and there are no established guidelines for it.
This is an area that needs more research. Because smoking is known to be so harmful and difficult to stop, anything that genuinely helps people quit and is less harmful than it (or at least not more harmful) deserves consideration as a cessation therapy . Such a balance of evidence, however, is not yet established.
Ideally, smokers would simply walk away from the habit and never look back. But anyone who has smoked and stopped or tried to stop knows, that going cold turkey can set quitters up for failure. So, for smokers who do intend to quit using e-cigarettes:
While short-term studies on health effects appear hopeful compared to smoking, we don’t yet know the long-term health effects of vaping even for a short time .
The new-to-inhalation chemicals in e-cigarette products represent a colossal unknown. One certainty is this: there is not a safe or harmless way to consume tobacco products . The only demographic that might benefit from vaping, instead of being harmed by it—and the jury is still out on this—is smokers with a plan to quit.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.