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June 15, 2023
6 min to read

Are Elf Bars & Other Disposable Vapes Bad for You?

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Vaping360 Staff

Note

Elf Bar is changing the brand name on its products sold in the United States to EBDESIGN after a federal judge ordered the company to stop using the ELFBAR name until a trademark dispute is decided.

EBDESIGN-branded products will arrive in the U.S. soon after March 10. Product model numbers will remain the same, as will the appearance of the devices. Model numbers will be more prominent on the devices and packaging, and the brand name will be smaller.

Beware of ELFBAR-branded products still being sold in stores. They could be fake (or counterfeit) Elf Bars.

What are Elf Bars & disposable vapes?

Elf Bars are hugely popular disposable vapes (or e-cigarettes) available in various sizes, flavors, and nicotine levels. A disposable vape is simply an e-cigarette used only once (until it’s empty) and then thrown away. Disposable vapes have become the most widely used vapes in recent years, due to their ease of use, variety of flavors, and convenience.

Are Elf Bars bad for you?

The short answer is that Elf Bars are considered 95% safer than traditional cigarettes. Whilst they cannot be deemed completely harmless, they are a far safer option for adult smokers compared with cigarettes.

When answering whether disposable vapes—or in this case, Elf Bars—are bad for your health, it is important to consider that every discussion about the health risks of vaping should begin with a comparison to cigarette smoking. Vapes are designed to be reduced-harm alternatives to cigarettes, and it’s important to weigh vaping versus smoking, because the vast majority of vapers are smokers or ex-smokers.

That said, let's look at some of the studies about vaping to determine if Elf Bars & other disposable vapes are bad for you.

Public Health England has been unequivocal in its findings: the respected British agency says “vaping is at least 95 percent safer than smoking” and that vapes “are significantly less harmful to health than tobacco and have the potential to help smokers quit smoking.” The landmark study by the Royal College of Physicians in 2016 on vaping—the group that first discovered the links between smoking and lung cancer—reached the same conclusion.

Most vaping studies compare smoking with e-cigarette use, and we know from the research noted above that vapes are 95% less harmful than smoking. However, one study in 2017 is unique in that it tracked the health markers of a group of vapers who had never smoked before for 3.5 years.

The researchers carefully measured heart, lung, and circulatory health indicators and compared them to the same markers in a control group of non-vapers who had also never smoked. The findings were uniformly positive. The vapers’ health markers were no worse than the non-smokers’—even among those who vaped the most.

“Although it cannot be excluded that some harm may occur at later stages, this study did not demonstrate any health concerns associated with long-term use of [vapes] in relatively young users who did not also smoke tobacco,” wrote the authors.

In summary, if you are a smoker looking to kick the habit, Elf Bars and other disposable vapes, are great, easy-to-use alternatives that could help you quit smoking for good. However, if you don’t smoke, we don’t recommend taking up vaping and using Elf Bars.

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Are Elf Bars worse than cigarettes? Debunking misinformation

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Elf Bars are definitely not worse than cigarettes. As we have established above, Elf Bars and other vapes are 95% less harmful than cigarettes. However, this hasn’t stopped misinformation from spreading online.

A recent Tiktok video has garnered several million views, which has led to an Elf Bar 600 being incorrectly compared to 48 to 50 cigarettes by several large online media outlets.

Dr. Onkar Mudhar, a UK-based dentist, says the following in his Tiktok video: "Smoking a whole Geek or Elf bar is the equivalent of about 48 to 50 cigarettes. Both of these [bars] contain two milligrams of nicotine salt, so [the] equivalent 20 milligrams of nicotine."

We’ll now explain why he is incorrect and why this is misleading.

According to testing done at Penn State University, the median nicotine content of all the cigarette brands they tested was 10.2 mg per cigarette. Newport cigarettes had the most nicotine of any American brand tested, at 13.4 mg per cigarette. Therefore, an average pack of cigarettes contains 204 mg of nicotine (20 cigarettes X 10.2 mg).

An Elf Bar in the UK can have up to 2% nicotine, equating to 20 mg/mL. Given an Elf Bar 600 (the most popular model sold in the UK and Europe) has 2 mL of e-juice, the total nicotine content equals 40 mg per Elf Bar (20 mg/mL x 2 mL). Without considering nicotine absorption rates across both smoking and vaping, one Elf Bar is the equivalent of around four cigarettes in terms of nicotine content.

However, this is where the comparison ends. Cigarettes are set on fire, and the smoke contains a deadly brew of carcinogens and lung-damaging constituents. The vapor from an Elf Bar (or any e-cigarette) contains just a few concerning chemicals in tiny amounts. Alternatively, 4,000 chemicals, have been identified in the tobacco smoke of a cigarette. Of the 4000 chemicals, more than 70 harmful chemicals are known to cause, initiate or promote cancer.

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Do Elf Bars & other disposable vapes have side effects?

Although e-cigarettes are not medical devices, side effects for the user may occur. Medical studies and official surveys to reference for vaping side effects are sorely lacking, with most focusing on overall health and vaping. To compensate for that, Google keywords and search traffic data were used to see what side effects were most searched for. Social media posts and threads were also referenced—such as vape forums’ health-related topics. Finally, since we at Vaping360 are all vapers, our experiences continually inform us.

The most common side effects from vaping (including Elf Bars):

  • Dry mouth
  • Dizziness or headrush
  • Feeling tired and fatigued
  • Sore throat
  • Coughing
  • Headaches
  • Weight loss/gain
  • Nausea
  • Chest pain
  • Read more about the side effects of vaping in our full article.

    A lot of the perceived side effects from vaping are actually side effects of nicotine usage. And many of the above examples are shared with FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies like gum and patches.

    However, a few of these side effects are particular to vaping itself. The key to remember is that vapes are not meant to be health products. They are, however, a much safer alternative when vaping is compared to smoking.

    If you are one of the millions that use vaping as an alternative to smoking, the mild side effects of vaping should be viewed in comparison to the absolute hazards of smoking cigarettes.

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    Vaping360 Staff

    Vaping since: 6 years

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    Vaping360 Staff

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