Vaping-related illness

Q: Can vaping make you sick? What are the symptoms of vaping-related illness?

A: Vaping can make a person sick. We're hearing a lot about vaping-related illness right now. 

Symptoms of vaping-related illness are very similar to symptoms that we see with illnesses such as pneumonia, cold, and flu.

Symptoms could be a cough, shortness of breath, potentially difficulty breathing as well as nausea and vomiting.

These symptoms can happen over a couple of days or they can appear quickly.

Q: What are the effects of vaping short-term? Long-term?

A: The short-term effect of vaping is lung injury that leads to more infections, like what we’re seeing with vaping-related illness. 

The long-term effects are a little less known.  Doctors are confident that within 10 years or so, they will be able to say that vaping leads to cancer. 

Q: Is vaping bad for your lungs?

A:We don't know what will happen to our lungs when people vape for 20 years because we haven't seen somebody do it for that long yet, but what we know right now is it can make it harder for the lungs to fight off infection.

We also know that it can break down cells and release free radicals which have been known to lead to cancer.

So, we don't know that it causes cancer, but with more and more time, we will probably find that to be the case.