If you’re a smoker who wants to give up tobacco, you might be interested in vaping as a possible alternative – but you may also have concerns over any health risks since you don’t want to give up one dangerous habit in favor of another potentially hazardous one.

To address such concerns and to help you understand potential health issues related to vaping, in this post, we answer the question, is vegetable glycerin safe to vape?

What is vegetable glycerin?

Let’s start at the beginning – what is vegetable glycerin?

In recent years, the popularity of vaping has exploded, partly due to its value as a way to give up smoking tobacco cigarettes, something that has long been known to be incredibly bad for your health.

This is because vaping replicates the feel and experience of smoking by giving your hands something to do while simulating the action of taking a puff from a cigarette and then producing a cloud of smoke-like vapor.

However, instead of inhaling the smoke from combusted tobacco, you inhale “vapor” – technically vape juice that has been heated and converted to aerosol (which is why, although the term “vapor” is widely used, it’s not technically correct).

Vape juice, also known as e-liquid, usually contains four main ingredients, vegetable glycerin (VG), propylene glycol (PG), flavorings and nicotine – although nicotine is not always present.

Vegetable glycerin, as the name suggests, is derived from plants – usually, the VG in vape juice comes from soy oil, coconut oil or palm oil.

In its pure form, it is a colorless (or sometimes slightly brown), odorless, viscous liquid that has a slightly sweet taste.

It is commonly used in other products such as food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even some detergents due to various properties it has.

For example, it is often included in foods as an emulsifier that helps oil- and water-based ingredients mix. It is also included in some foods as a thickener.

Why does vape juice contain VG?

Both VG and PG are included in vape juice because they are able to carry the flavors and the nicotine once the juice has been converted to aerosol or “vapor”.

Furthermore, each of these two ingredients also has another main function.

PG, a petroleum byproduct, is included because it enhances the so-called throat hit that replicates the feeling you experience in your throat when you take a puff on a cigarette.

VG, on the other hand, is included thanks to its ability to create large clouds of vapor.

As a result, these two ingredients are mixed in varying ratios depending on the desired effect.

This means if you enjoy larger clouds of vapor, you should favor vape juices that contain higher percentages of VG to PG while if you enjoy a strong throat hit or prefer smaller, more discreet vapor clouds, juices with a high ratio of PG to VG are the better option.

If you want to experience the best of both worlds, however, a fairly even blend of the two is recommended.

For example, if you want to enjoy a satisfying throat hit with a large cloud of vapor, something like the disposable Katana BP10000 from Spiritbar would be a great place to start.

This device takes its inspiration from the iconic Japanese katana sword, and its sleek and ergonomic design offers the perfect combination of style, convenience and ease of use.

Furthermore, each device contains enough juice for up to 10,000 luxurious puffs, which is why this vape is proving so popular among newbies and experienced vapers alike.

Is Vegetable Glycerin safe to vape?

So now to return to our central question – is VG safe?

As we’ve mentioned, VG is commonly used in a wide range of products, and there’s every chance you use products containing VG every day.

VG is officially classed as being “generally recognized as safe” by the US Food and Drug Administration, which means when used in foods, cosmetics and the like, it is not considered to pose any health risk.

However, vaping is a relatively new practice, and when VG received its classification, it wasn’t with the idea of heating it to convert it to an aerosol and then inhaling it in mind.

When you heat substances in this way, it can change their chemical composition, and the simple fact is, since vaping is so new, we just don’t know what the long-term effects of vaping it might be.

Not enough large-scale studies have been carried out into the effects of vaping VG or PG, and the information we do have at the moment is inconclusive.

Some studies suggest that vaping may cause inflammation in lung tissues while others seem to show that it’s harmless.

The most sensible answer at the moment, then, is that vaping VG seems to be relatively harmless – but we need to wait for more long-term studies to be carried out before we can claim this definitively.

However, there’s another important consideration when it comes to vaping as a replacement for smoking tobacco cigarettes – so let’s look at this next.

It’s almost certainly a lot safer than smoking

Smoking tobacco is now widely regarded as one of the unhealthiest habits you can have.

Tobacco contains over 7,000 compounds that are known to damage our health, and many of them are known to be carcinogenic.

Furthermore, smoking is known to cause heart disease among other serious health conditions, and in short, smokers are far more likely to die younger than people who have never smoked.

If you then place this alongside the potential health risks associated with vaping VG or PG, it’s clear that if you are a smoker, giving up cigarettes in favor of vaping is extremely likely to be a healthier choice, regardless of the dangers of vaping.

To put it another way, if you know something is harmful to your health, it makes sense to stop doing it in favor of something that could be harmful to your health, especially if the potential health risks of what you replace it with are likely to be far less serious.

The conclusion, then, is clear. If you’re a smoker, it makes logical sense to give up smoking in favor of vaping because even if vaping is somewhat bad for your health, it’s a lot better for your health than smoking tobacco cigarettes.

Indeed, vaping has been estimated to be 95% less harmful than smoking, so the argument that vaping is not a good alternative to smoking because it’s also bad for you simply doesn’t hold any water.

On the other hand, if you’ve never smoked, you’re better off avoiding vaping since nicotine vapes are highly addictive, and you are likely to become hooked on a product still has some associated health risks.

Are there any alternatives to VG in vape juice?

If VG – and PG – are potentially harmful, you might be wondering if there are any 100% healthy alternatives – and the answer at the moment is no.

No satisfactory substitute for VG exists, and other than one or two ingredients that show some promise, there’s nothing out there to replace PG either – which is why both ingredients are present in varying proportions in just about every vape juice that’s currently sold.

You might also be wondering if it’s possible to make vape juices without either of these ingredients, and the answer to this question is, not really.

If you made a vape juice with only VG, you would obtain incredibly large clouds of vapor, but there would be no throat hit – and most vapers would find this quite unsatisfying.

On the other hand, a vape juice with only PG and no VG would produce an extremely harsh throat hit and practically no vapor cloud, which most vapers would also not enjoy.

This is why both are present in just about any vape juice you’ll ever buy – although the precise ratio is something that’s more open to experimentation.

What about the other ingredients in vape juice?

And finally, a quick word on some of the other ingredients in vape juice.

The main issue here is with the flavorings since a wide range of chemicals are used, and not all of them have been tested and passed as safe.

Some ingredients that were once common – such as diacetyl, a flavoring used to sweeten microwave popcorn and the ingredient in vape juice suspected of causing the notorious “popcorn lung” – are no longer used due to health concerns.

However, others may be present that represent risks to health that we are currently unaware of.

That said, the same is true here as with VG and PG – even if some of the ingredients are harmful to health, they’re still unlikely to be anywhere near as bad for you as smoking cigarettes, so vaping is still likely to be a far healthier alternative, despite the potential risks.

A far safer alternative to smoking

As we’ve seen, vaping vegetable glycerin is generally safe, even if we still don’t have a definitive answer to the potential health risks it may have long-term.

However, even if vaping VG does turn out to have some negative effects on health, it’s still likely to be far less dangerous than tobacco, so if you’re a smoker and want to try vaping instead, there are no strong arguments why you shouldn’t give it a go.

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