Adding mint flavour to vape liquid makes it more toxic and damaging to lungs, a new study reveals. 

Menthol-flavoured vape liquid generates more toxic microparticles than menthol-free juice, researchers found.

They used a specially designed “vaping robot” that mimics the mechanics of human breathing and vaping behaviour to analyse the difference mint flavouring makes.

They also examined the medical records of vapers and found menthol vapers took shallower breaths and had poorer lung function compared to non-menthol smokers – regardless of age, gender, race, and smoking nicotine or cannabis products.

“Many people, especially youth, erroneously assume that vaping is safe, but even nicotine-free vaping mixtures contain many compounds that can potentially damage the lungs,” said senior author Kambez H Benam, associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

“Just because something is safe to consume as food does not mean that it’s safe to inhale.”

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The vaping robot precisely mimics the temperature, humidity, puff volume and duration of vaping, meaning it can simulate the pattern of healthy and diseased breathing and reliably predict lung toxicity related to vapes.

The researchers developed the robot to improve testing of how mixing vaping liquids and adding flavourings affects their composition and health impacts.

It overcomes the limitations of traditional testing that involve using rats and mice or growing cells in a lab.

Rodents have very different anatomy of their nasal passages while lab-based testing can take weeks or months to deliver reliable results.

The research was published on Tuesday in the journal Respiratory Research.

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