Ban e-cigs indoors say health experts

Electronic cigarette as they should be banned from indoor spaces and face curbs on their sale over health fears, the World Health Organisation has said.

Despite releasing vapour instead of smoke the devices, officially known as electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), still carry a risk to those standing around users, a report for the Geneva-based UN organisation said.

In a report it said: “The fact that ENDS exhaled aerosol contains on average lower levels of toxicants than the emissions from combusted tobacco does not mean that these levels are acceptable to involuntarily exposed bystanders.

“In fact, exhaled aerosol is likely to increase above background levels the risk of disease to bystanders, especially in the case of some ENDS that produce toxicant levels in the range of that produced by some cigarettes.”

The report, to be discussed at October’s WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Moscow, also recommends preventing manufacturers from marketing e-cigs as “smoking cessation aids” until they provide scientific evidence to back the claim.

The report also says that they should be banned from sale to minors, and that vending machines should be removed “in almost all locations”.

Electronic cigarettes are currently regulated as consumer products in the UK but from 2016 any nicotine-containing products (NCPs) which make medicinal claims - such as claiming they are a stop-smoking aid - will be regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

In its report, the WHO said that so far the evidence that e-cigarettes helped people quit smoking was “limited” and “does not allow conclusions to be reached”.

It said: “Although anecdotal reports indicate that an undetermined proportion of ENDS users have quit smoking using these products, their efficacy has not been systematically evaluated yet.

“Only a few studies have examined whether the use of ENDS is an effective method for quitting tobacco smoking.”

The one “randomised control trial” that has been carried out found that ENDS were about as effective as nicotine patches, it added.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said it could not support any plans to include electronic cigarettes under smokefree legislation.

Hazel Cheeseman, its director of policy and research, said there was “no evidence of any harm to bystanders from use of these devices” and said regulation needed to be proportionate.