Switching to e cigarettes could save millions of smokers’ lives, a conference on the rapidly expanding use of the devices heard Tuesday, though some delegates warned more research on the health effects is needed.

The merits of e cigarettes were thrashed out at a one day gathering of scientists, experts, policymakers and industry figures at the Royal Society in London.

The use of electronic cigarettes pen sized battery powered devices that simulate smoking by heating and vaporizing a liquid solution containing nicotine has grown rapidly.

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Sales have doubled annually for the last four years and there are an estimated seven million users across Europe.

Many delegates merrily “vaped” away throughout the conference sessions, including one man with a luxuriant moustache puffing away on an e pipe.

“Cigarettes are killing 5.4 million people per year in the world,” said Robert West, a health psychology professor and the director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK.

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He said switching to e cigarettes could save millions of lives, but the debate was about “whether that goal can be realized and how best to do it”.

The professor said almost a third of attempts to quit smoking involved e cigarettes.

Doctor Jacques Le Houezec, a consultant in public health and tobacco dependence from France, told delegates that while e cigarettes contained some harmful substances, the levels of toxicants were nine to 450 times lower than in cigarette smoke.

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He said the exponential growth of e cigarettes was being led by smokers, not scientists.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the Action on Smoking and Heath (ASH) pressure group, said e cigarettes could be a leap forward for public health but warned that not enough was known about their effects and pointed out that the tobacco companies are snapping up the e cigarette manufacturers.

“ASH thinks that e cigarettes have significant potential. They are a lot less harmful than smoking. Clearly smokers find them attractive, primarily as a way of quitting and moving away from smoking, which they know will kill them,” she told AFP.

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“But at the moment I think the jury’s out and these products need regulating because there’s a real concern that their safety and effectiveness is not guaranteed without regulation.

“The tobacco companies are moving in. For them it’s potentially a ‘Kodak moment’ because if everyone moved to e cigarettes, they’d lose their market so they’ve got to be in there. A lot of the bigger e cigarette companies have already been bought up.”

She warned “If there are carcinogens in there, you won’t see an immediate effect but 10, 15, 20 years down the line, people will be dying from that.

“The development of e cigarettes is definitely running ahead of the science.”

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The announcement was made by the Dutch Health Ministry and is based on findings by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health. The ministry s policy statement emphasized the lack of existing data concerning the health effects of e cigarettes. “There is insufficient scientific evidence to be able to say whether the quantities of toxins in the exhaled air are dangerous for bystanders,” Dutch deputy health minister, Martin Van Rijn, wrote in a letter to parliament on Thursday.

As part of a policy move to address the health threats of e cigarettes, Van Rijn stated in his letter that he will take measures in national legislation in regard to advertising, safety, quality, and labeling of e cigarettes. These measures will be imposed before any European health policy consensus about the matter is reached.

Reaching a Consensus About E cigarettes

Last May, experts gathered at the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss reaching a common economic and scientific policy regarding electronic cigarettes.

At the workshop, Dr Roberto Bertollini, Chief Scientist and World Health Organization representative to the European Union, observed the significant increase in sales of e cigarettes across Europe ever since their introduction to the market. He also mentioned that the current scientific evidence on the potential benefits as well as risks of these alternatives is inconclusive. In particular, he said, the long terms effects are unknown.

At the same meeting, the president of the European Respiratory Society, Francesco Blasi, added that the effects that e cigarettes have on the lungs remain unknown, as is the extent of nicotine uptake. But Charlotta Pisinger, a senior research fellow at the Research Center for Prevention and Health in Copenhagen, countered that our current knowledge about the health effects of e cigarettes is akin to our knowledge of regular cigarettes 100 years ago. She noted that an accumulation of small fragments of material has actually been detected in lungs after inhaling e cigarettes, which could eventually become a health concern.

But a representative of the German E cigarette User Association, Hans Christian Holy, highlighted the potential health benefits of e cigarettes by reducing the number of deaths from tobacco smoke. In this sense, he concluded, the opportunity to use e cigarettes to prevent harm shouldn t be overlooked.