E-Cigarettes and Young Children: The Dangers of Liquid Nicotine Exposure :

As more and more articles are published on the health concerns related to electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in our journal (Pediatric Collections: E-cigarettes) and others, we are doing more and more to educate teenagers about these concerns. But what about health concerns in children?  While we recognize that the dangers of second hand smoke, additional concerns are raised in study being released in our journal this week by Govindarajan et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-3361).  These authors opted to look at the prevalence of children exposed to liquid nicotine derived from e-cigarettes and the liquids contained in them.  The authors reviewed reports of liquid nicotine exposures in children less than 6 years of age from the National Poison Data System from 2012 to 2017 and noted that most exposures were due to ingestion of the liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes especially in children less than 3 years of age.  The good news from this article is that after the passage of a federal law in 2015 requiring child-resistant packaging for liquid nicotine containers, the number of exposures per year dropped, although is still occurring.  This study takes the lid off yet another health concern related to the dangers of e-cigarette use and will hopefully lead to further preventive measures that will make it even more difficult for children to gain access to the liquid nicotine in these devices.  Link to the study and learn more.