What's really in your vape? Allergy expert raises health concerns

What's really in your vape? Allergy expert raises health concerns Siya Tsewu Sat, 10/31/2026 - 10:52

JOHANNESBURG - Vaping may not be as safe as it seems.

That's according to Thulja Trimkamjee, vice president of the Allergy Society. She said harmful chemicals may be inhaled into your lungs.

It comes as a Kenvuw study finds that one in six pupils are vaping.

"Vaping is believed by many people who vape and largely by many people in the world to be safe. A lot of people consider that vape just to be water vapor. So vaping is not as safe as the world has believed it to be. Science is still to show us some of the long-term effects of vaping. But a lot of studies have been done on short-term effects of vaping. Remember with smoking, the dangers are you've got your nicotine, you've got your tobacco and you've now got a combustion of an item that you're inhaling.

"With vaping, you've got all kinds of chemicals that are being put in these devices. The viewers can see some of these devices here that are advertised constantly. The problem with vaping is that we don't know what's in a lot of these devices. I often say to patients that if I want to know what your exposure and your risk is as a smoker, I'm going to ask you, how many cigarettes do you smoke a day? How many years have you smoked for? How often do you smoke in terms of your intervals? And based on that, I can work out your exposure and your risk.

"But you know, with vaping, you have no idea what's going inside of these liquids. We have no idea what the flavourants and the chemicals that people are being exposed to and the damage that it's doing to their airways and to their lungs as well. And what the effects of the heating of some of these liquids is