Comment by adanto6840 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adanto6840 | Hacker News Reader

Only tangentially relevant, but does anyone have any insight on how applicable this broader topic might (or not) be to the "essential oil" industry?

Specifically talking about the business of "essential oil diffusers" and the sales of essential oils. From my understanding, the diffusers are largely akin to ultrasonic humidifiers containing oil instead of water (though several forms of diffuser exist including ultrasonic, evaporative, heat, etc) -- which I would imagine is basically just putting oil into the air for later inhalation...

The article mentions several times, and somewhat unsurprisingly, that the inhalation of oil is not good for you or for the health of human lungs. Is this the case with all types & classes of oils (ie "essential oils"), or are oils used for vaping specifically bad/worse, or is there just not much data on the broader topic of inhalation of atomized oils yet?

I've read the relevant Wikipedia articles and read through the studies/sources that are freely available, but if anyone has any further insight or knowledge I'd really love to better understand it.

FWIW, my personal guess would be that the inhalation of most any non-gaseous matter is probably bad for you -- but if there's any science/data out there on it I'd love to hear about it.

I bought an Awair some months ago, having been diagnosed with Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and slightly freaking out, I wanted to have a bit more data on my living conditions. It measures PM2.5, VOCs, humidity, CO2 and temperature. Luckily my indoor air quality was pretty good, except for low humidity. The Awair app kept nagging me to get a humidifier, so I relented and bought one. Just some minutes after switching it on, the PM2.5 skyrocketed!

I googled for answers, and found out that Awair warned about this: https://blog.getawair.com/awair-investigates-how-your-humidi...

The humidifier was spewing crap out into my air!

I switched to distilled water and the measurements were OK again, but a bit scary to see how bad it was with regular tap water.

> Luckily my indoor air quality was pretty good, except for low humidity.

What's the problem supposed to be with low humidity? All of the humidity-related problems I know of, including discomfort, come from high humidity.

If you have sensitive or dry skin, or something like eczema, it can (usually over long periods of time) cause some pretty severe issues if you don’t have enough humidity.

In my experience, dry, cracked lips, asthma attacks, and a stuffed-up nose. The reason that humidifiers are a business is because low humidity can be uncomfortable.

Discomfort due to dry air is a major problem in airplanes. You may already have experienced it.

One of the main reasons why they recirculate some air instead of making it an open circuit is to conserve moisture. Outside air at high altitude is extremely dry. Moisturizers could be used but that would require heavy and therefore expensive water tanks.

To me the most noticeable problem is dry eyes, which makes me feel like I'm exhausted and falling asleep, even if I've had a good night's sleep. Before we got humidifiers it started the minute I walked into the office.

Also occasional nosebleeds.

Just one relevant bit of information: in “classic” vaping (the one where the goal is to inhale nicotine through the use of liquid “e-juice”) there are no oils involved whatsoever, in fact vapers who make DIY juice, actively avoid any ingredient that contains any kind of vegetable oil in their composition (which is unfortunately often the case with some types of food flavouring). This is because oils could combust and combustion is the very thing people want to avoid when switching from smoking to vaping.

I’ve heard that there are other forms of vaping where e.g. cannabis oil is involved but that type of device works very differently and has nothing to do with “nicotine e-juice” vaping. (Edit: the NYT article is just conflating many separate phenomena under the umbrella term “vaping” which is very unfortunate).

PS Ex smoker and ex vaper here (I went from smoking to vaping to quitting everything, couldn’t have done it without vaping), I‘m fairly technical since I was involved in DIY juice making and device “modding” so hit me if you have questions.

Yes you could have done it without vaping. Yes, you didn't do it, but that's no proof.

When I look back at my personal story I don’t look for proof, I look at my past experiences and decide that something has value to me.

If proof is what you’re looking for, scientific studies about the effects of vaping abound.

It is a bit of a stretch to say there are no oils involved whatsoever. Glycerol/glycerin is almost always produced from triglycerides such as vegetable oil. (Edit: as the article states, the potential for left over oil from this process being present in the glycerol is one of the causes being explored)

Additionally, I believe the flashpoint for glycerol is lower than most vegetable oils so your argument doesn't make sense.

You naturally inhale essential oils when you walk through a forest and some of those (i.e. phytoncides) have been studied and linked to a range of positive health benefits, by for instance boosting immune system function and reducing negative stress. Those health effects have been reproduced by adding wood essential oils in the air of indoor environments. Example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20074458

However, different essential oils may have adverse effects as well and it seems like this is definitely understudied. It wasn't until I started looking into essential oils that I realized that almost every type of commercially available essential oil is toxic to cats. I would exercise extreme caution when using diffusers and stick to the few essential oils that have been well studied and considered safe for humans & pets.

I think concentration and magnitude is key. Frying definitely vaporises oils into the air but it doesn't seem to be causing lung issues.

I believe there are heath issues with frying oil. Just the first Google hit...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881732/

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/food-drink/bad-fry-news-fr...

And a meta-analysis: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.researchgate.net/publicatio...

Breathing the smoke and grease from frying is definitely not good for you. That’s one reason kitchens tend to have serious ventilation.

But people accept a certain amount of risk, since everyone needs to eat and cooking is a career for many people. Cooking is nowhere near as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.

Most cooks I know do both unfortunately

Do we have reliable data about the incidence of smoking among cooks and food preparation workers? How does it compare to the general population? Smoking is supposed to affect negatively your ability to recognise taste and smell, which are very important if you work in a kitchen but, at the same time, I too know several people who are in that line of business and are smokers.

You know why? Because all the chefs I know say the same thing - smoking is the only way to get any sort of break while in the kitchen, going outside and standing still doing nothing for 5 minutes is not acceptable, but somehow going out and smoking for 5 minutes is absolutely ok in most kitchens. I know some people who picked up smoking only to have an extra break at work.

On the plus side, I also know someone who bought himself an e-cig and somehow buys "blank"(saline/water filled) cartridges for it, just so he can have a short break but without any side effects of actually smoking.

Honestly, depending on the establishment you work in, your sense of taste and smell don’t matter much as a line cook or a regular prep employee. You are outputting dozens of the same dish repeatedly in the same order with the same ratio of ingredients. More of an assembly line with a series of predetermined steps than a creative expression through food. A batch of soup may be tasted once at the beginning of the shift when it is prepared but it usually isn’t being checked on the fly.

You usually don’t fry for the entire day. The diffusers spew stuff 24x7 in many cases, and folks try to inhale as much as possible for the quack health and wellness benefits.

That said, the “oils” are pretty dilute.

Search for "`chemical name` msds". You may need to look for the specific chemical name [1] rather than trade name. You should be able to find an occupational safety limit, lower exposure limit, or similarly worded section, which tells you how much (roughly) you can be safely (roughly) exposed to per unit time, usually 8 hour workday.

Anything that isn't air doesn't belong in your lungs. Period. Some things are less bad than others. However diffusers are unlikely to increase the concentration to harmful levels for healthy individuals. As an asthmatic though, I can definitely feel it when lots of diffusers are running.

[1] http://www.chemspider.com/

Without knowing for sure, I guess the concentration makes a big difference. Many things are toxic in high doses. The purpose of a vaper is to get as much oil in your lungs as possible. Not sure that compares to an essential oil diffuser.

With essential oils you put a few drops into something like 300ml of water. So the amount of oil getting to your lungs in a large room out of that few drops of oil is pretty trivial. Maybe say you get one drop of oil exposure, over 4 hours. I doubt lungs have much trouble clearing that out.

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