China's E-Cigarette Boom Lacks Oversight For Safety: Report
The boom has made China the breeding ground for a new, and some would say innovative, product. And yet the Chinese government has played no role in the development of the industry or in regulating it.
Some Chinese companies, however, are trying to get ahead of the anticipated FDA rules. First Union is one of the biggest, operating several manufacturing complexes here in Shenzhen with about 6,000 employees. Its plants have glass- enclosed, dust-free rooms that the company says are as clean and sophisticated as pharmaceutical labs.
"We have the same quality-control standards as medical device makers," said Sunny Xu, the chairman at First Union.
Global tobacco giants that have entered the e-cigarette market are also manufacturing in China, and they insist they are doing so with stringent controls.
Scientific studies hint at a host of problems related to poor manufacturing standards. A study published last year in the open access online journal PLoS One found the presence of tin particles and other metals in e-cigarette vapors and said they appeared to come from the solder joints of e-cigarette devices.
Another study of nearly two dozen e-cigarettes bought in the United States found large amounts of nickel and chromium, which probably came from the heating element, another suggestion that poorly manufactured e-cigarettes may allow the metals to enter into the e-liquids.
"We've found on the order of 25 or 26 different elements, including metals, in the e-cigarette aerosols," says Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology at the University of California, and co-author of several of the studies.
