Health watchdog calls for ban on e-cigarettes
Electronic cigarettes can be harmful to a fetus and youth - WHO.
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on the government to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. According to WHO, the cigarette-shaped devices can be extremely harmful to a fetus and youth.
The UN Health body has also recommended that the e-cigarettes be banned from public indoor spaces, until it has been proven that the exhaled vapour is not a health hazard to bystanders.
The cigarettes have flooded the South African market with the SA Medical Journal reporting that worldwide, e-cigarette sales increased by 240 percent between 2012 and last year.
WHO further added that current evidence shows that (e-cigarettes) aerosol is not ‘merely vapour’ as is often stipulated in the branding of these products. International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease said last year that the device’s function was to vaporise and deliver a chemical mixture composed of nicotine, propylene glycol and other chemicals to the lungs.
