Are Your Vape Devices Safe?

Vaping has often been heralded as a “safer” way to consume either nicotine or cannabinoids than smoking, but how a consumer chooses to vape can have significant impacts on their health.

The vaping industry, particularly for cannabinoid products, lacks comprehensive safety and quality standards. This gap poses risks to consumers due to inconsistent device components and the potential presence of harmful materials. The vape devices themselves present a suite of risks, such as exposure to unwanted metals like copper, nickel, and lead.

Evidence from a Health Canada study published in early 2024 strongly suggests metal contamination can come from the device before it has even been used and may increase with use depending on the “quality” of the materials used in the construction of the device.

So how can you determine that a device is “safe” to use?

The ASTM D37 Vape Device Safety & Testing Initiative is a volunteer driven collaborative effort that launched in January 2024 to develop standards that ensure cannabinoid vape devices are reliable and fit for purpose.

ASTM International is a globally recognized organization that develops and publishes accredited technical standards for a wide range of industries, materials, products, systems, and services. Committee D37 focuses on the development of standards for cannabis and its derived products. It has grown to include over 600 members from more than 30 countries and has published nearly 60 standards so far. The Initiative has identified 35 proposed standards to address the most pressing safety and quality issues related to cannabinoid vape devices.

Areas of focus include:

• Topography and Performance (Test methods to improve analysis and characterization of aerosolized vapors and device performance metrics.)
• Aerosolized Vapors and Emissions (Test methods to better understand cannabinoid delivery and degradation overtime and assess risk from aerosolized contaminants.)
• Device/Hardware Design (Specifications for components and hardware that will result in better performing, higher quality, more fit for purpose vape devices.)
• Components and Interactions Therewith (Test methods for characterizing materials used and interactions with cannabinoid substances to reduce harm and increase quality of materials.)
• Consumer Usage Characteristics (Puff-profiles and other topographies to better model real-world consumer usage habits to improve performance and harm reduction testing.)

As these standards are completed, Cannabis Safety & Quality (CSQ) will utilize them to create a much needed, accredited Vape Device Performance and Harm Reduction Certification Program.

In order to move forward however, the ASTM D37 Vape Device Safety & Testing Initiative needs more data and research to better inform the standards development process. In terms of what type of research is needed to properly draft these standards, we primarily need to understand WHAT we are inhaling and HOW we are inhaling to ensure these devices are safe for consumers to use regularly.

What are We Inhaling?

We all know the ceramic used to make nearly all cannabinoid vape device atomizer cores is a brittle material that can crack and flake. This is especially true when it’s repeatedly heating up and cooling down inside of your vape device. These flakes, or rather jagged shards, of ceramic are nanoparticle-sized and can be mobilized when someone inhales through the device. The possibility that vape devices themselves may be leading to silica dust exposure is alarming, both for the average and chronic consumer who could be literally killing themselves without knowing it.

Silica dust and nanoparticles are known health hazards, which is why the long-term health effects from ceramic based atomizer technologies should be investigated.

Additionally, materials used to create conductive wiring materials for the device could also bring about potential health concerns. When it comes to testing for elemental impurities, most regulatory markets only address the big four–arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and lead, none of which are found in these materials.

Nichrome and stainless steel are the most common materials used in this case, which contain nickel, chromium, and molybdenum, in the case of stainless steel. These elements have defined concentration limits for products to ensure safety, but since vape products are not being tested for these elemental impurities, are we overlooking a potential health concern? Just like with the ceramic core, are we unknowingly inhaling hazardous materials, like toxic gases, every time we use a vape device?

How are we inhaling?

Research is needed to develop better performing more consistent vape devices. Pressure Drop and Saturation Rate are two critical performance characteristics of vape devices that can be used to aid in hardware optimization.

Pressure drop can be used to determine if a device is clogging by evaluating the draw resistance across the atomizer core. Saturation rate can also be used to determine if a device is clogging, or more accurately a change in saturation rate can, but it is more powerful as an assessment of the uniformity of the ceramic structure.
Typical ceramic atomizer cores have highly irregular structures, this leads to inconsistent saturation rates and vapor production. Why is that a problem? Saturate too slowly and the consumer gets a dry hit, but if saturation happens too quickly, the device can clog or leak and potentially fail. These irregular structures also make it difficult to establish a baseline draw resistance across the device and complicates pressure drop measurements.

The production of ceramic atomizer cores with more uniform and consistent structures would be a valuable focus area, as it would provide a means of controlling saturation rate and accurately measuring the pressure drop of the system, and the development of test methods for measuring the pressure drop and saturation rate of cannabinoid vape devices would benefit the market greatly by giving hardware designers ways to measure and assess design changes more efficiently.

Lastly, another noteworthy research project would be to compare the data generated from different puff profiles.

Many researchers will reference the use of vaporizer topography to map consumer usage data. Topography is an essential tool when trying to understand medicine delivery, level of harm, and other characteristics of constituents when inhaled. Topography analysis is used to build consumer usage profiles, but it can also be used to optimize hardware design and improve device performance. But which topography method is “correct,” or rather, which method is fit for which purpose?

If you need to measure the pressure drop for a batch of devices, do you need a sophisticated “human” puff profile or, is a simple square wave more than sufficient? If you want to discover how deep into the lungs your new formulation gets, would a basic sinusoidal wave suffice? Besides the cost of instrumentation, are there any other advantages of using one puff profile over another?

What we lack is a comparison of these waveforms when performing different analyses to know which one is most appropriate to perform which analysis.
These are all questions the ASTM D37 Vape Device Safety & Testing Initiative is trying to answer.

Also read: California’s Cannabis Industry Faces Growing Wildfire Threat

What’s Next?

The success of the ASTM D37 Vape Device Safety & Testing Initiative depends on the active participation of various stakeholders, including industry representatives, consumers, researchers, and regulators. CSQ is proud to be a participating member driving these standard development efforts forward.

Participating allows stakeholder groups like CSQ and other volunteers to influence the direction of the standards and ensure that they reflect the needs and interests of all involved parties. Academic institutions and researchers play an important role as well by providing the necessary data and insights needed to structure the standards.

Standards are vital for ensuring the safety and quality of vape devices, which in turn protects consumers and supports industry growth. But in order to create them, all parties involved must collaborate to ensure that the standards are comprehensive, practical, and widely accepted.

This is what makes the ASTM D37 Vape Device Safety and Test Initiative so important, because it serves as the “sandbox” where impacted stakeholders can come together to accelerate the standards development process. This is also why CSQ has decided to take a leading role, with plans to work closely with the D37 committee to develop these and other standards, and help licensed operators get certified to ASTM standards by incorporating the standards into accredited certification programs.

Ensuring the safety and quality of the global cannabis industries (both marijuana and hemp) is our mission and why we exist. But, we cannot do it alone. It takes a village and only by working together can we ensure the success of this effort.

To learn more about how to participate in ASTM International D37 and the standards developed process, visit www.astmcannabis.org, and if you would like to help create standards specifically for cannabinoid vape devices, feel free to reach out to me directly – dmillard@csqcertification.com

Live long and process.

The post Are Your Vape Devices Safe? appeared first on Cannabis & Tech Today.