Flavor Manufacturers Warn Companies That Breathing Heated Flavors Can Be Dangerous; Relevant to E-Cigs

Source from:  Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (UCSF) 12/25/2014

E-cigarette companies and the people who support them love to point out that the flavors used in e-cigarettes are "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS).　The GRAS definition applies to ingested (eaten) not inhaled (breathed) use of these chemicals.

In fact, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of America (FEMA), the organization which assigns most of the GRAS designations, specifically warns its members to ensure that workers are protected from inhaling flavors while working with them.　In its 32 page guide, Respiratory Health and Safety in the Flavor Manufacturing Workplace, it recommends that the following two signs be posted where people are working with flavors:

FEMA goes on to highlight the special dangers of inhaling heated flavors and how ventilation is not a solution.　(This is important not only for e-cigarette user safety but also speaks to why e-cigarettes should be included in clean indoor air laws.)

In addition to being of concern to people using e-cigarettes and bystanders breathing the secondhand heated aerosol, these issues should be of particular concern to people working in and visiting vape shops.
 
The whole GRAS process, by the way, is not an effective way to protect the public from potentially dangeous flavors.　I used to think that the FDA was who identified flavors are "generally recognized as safe" (for ingestion), but it turns out that the flavor industry awards GRAS designations to itself through a process that is rife with conflicts of interest.
 
Thomas Neltner and colleagues published a searing analysis of the current self-voluntary system, " Conflicts　of interest in approvals of additives to food determined to be generally recognized as safe: out of balance," in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2013. Enditem