Hookah and Vaping: Safe Nicotine Delivery Systems?

Hookah and vaping have recently been popularized as alternative to smoking tobacco. Hookah heats tobacco with a very hot piece of charcoal and then the air is pulled through the hot tobacco, this smoke is then pulled through water before it reaches the user's mouth and lungs. Vaping uses electricity to vaporize a propylene glycol/glycerine matrix that contains nicotine and flavoring agents. This vapor is then pulled directly into the mouth and lungs. The mainstream vapors from both hookah and vaping were collected on Cambridge filters, the filters were soaked in water and then the aqueous solutions were dried via vacuum centrifugation. After weighing the dried mass, the samples were reconstituted with water and then analyzed by UV spectroscopy; the Hookah samples had absorbance at 275 nm. Our original hypothesis was that the water soluble tar components would be trapped in the water that the hookah smoke is pulled through. Thus, there should have been no absorbance at 275nm. The vaping samples did not absorb at 275; since vaping does not burn or heat tobacco, we did not expect to find the same absorbance as the cigarette tar radical. Gel electrophoresis was used to analyze the nicking of plasmid (pUC18) DNA. Aqueous solutions of Hookah and vaping solutions were tested in our DNA nicking assay. Briefly, we use supercoiled pUC18 DNA, this DNA unwinds after a single nick. The supercoiled and nicked (open circular) DNA migrate as two distinct bands in the agarose gel. The density of each band is then quantitated to determine the amount of DNA nicking. The amount of nicking by both vaping and hookah solutions is orders of magnitude less that the nicking we have detected with cigarette smoke. However, we have detected aldehydes in both vaping and hookah solutions. Aldehydes are known to be toxic, primarily by their facile reaction with primary amines and thus their ability to wreck havoc with protein structure. We have implemented an assay to detect aldehydes in both hookah and vaping solutions. The reagent, Purpald, 4‐Amino‐3‐hydrazino‐5‐mercapto‐1,2,4‐triazole readily reacts with aldehydes and then the oxidized product of the reaction produces purple solutions. We then analyzed the purple solutions by UV/VIS. Based on the UV spectra, we have detected acetaldehydes in both vaping and hookah solutions. Support or Funding Information R. Dunham is supported by the CSU, Stanislaus McNair Scholars program. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .