E-cigarettes aren’t just for hipsters — they’re a breath of not-quite-fresh air to smokers tired of being exiled outdoors when they need a puff. Since an e-cigarette user exhales water vapor instead of smoke, it’s easier to allow them back into bars and workplaces.
The e-cigarette seems like a safer option: Instead of burning a tobacco mixture, the devices uses a heating element to warm up a liquid solution containing nicotine. Instead of exhaling a cloud of smoke, the e-cig smoker exhales mostly water vapor. But do e-cigarettes pose any secondhand dangers to bystanders? One of the first studies to look at the issue of secondhand e-cigarette vapor finds you might get a whiff of nicotine from being close to someone puffing on an e-cig, and nothing much more.