Trade in e-cigarettes booming despite health concerns

The small devices generally contain a rechargeable battery and an atomizer for vaporizing a liquid intended to simulate some of the pleasures of smoking without the harmful effects. The potential risks involved and the precise contents of the liquids, along with their side-effects have been little researched. However, warnings are becoming increasingly loud, leading some countries to ban the devices.
"Consumers should be able to rely on a product that is safe from a health viewpoint and that is by no means certain in the case of the e-cigarette," Martina Poetschke-Langer of the DKFZ German cancer research centre says. She cautions that lessons should be drawn from the mistakes of the past when promoting a new product.
"The standard cigarette caused millions of deaths over the course of the last century and would never have been allowed if we had known a hundred years ago what we know now," she says.
The precise legal status of e-cigarettes is far from clear. Many US doctors back the device as an aid to stopping smoking, but across the border in Canada, the federal health authorities have come out against them. The British body Cancer Research UK sees them as safer than real cigarettes and possibly useful in breaking smoking dependence.//DPA