Glycerol is a naturally occurring chemical. People use it as a medicine. Some uses and dosage forms have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Glycerol is taken by mouth for weight loss, improving exercise performance, helping the body replace water lost during diarrhea and vomiting’ and reducing pressure inside the eye in people with glaucoma. Athletes also use glycerol to keep from becoming dehydrated. (Source WebMD).
Propylene Glycol is FDA-approved for numerous purposes, including use in theatrical smoke machines, as a solvent for food colorings and as an additive in and medicine and food.
The Select Committee has weighed the available information and concludes that there is no evidence in the available information on propylene glycol and propylene glycol monostearate that demonstrates, or suggests reason to suspect, a hazard to the public when they are used at levels that are now current or that might reasonably be expected in future. (Source: FDA)
Propylene Glycol is a solvent for several water-insoluble drugs intended for parenteral administration; an ingredient of hydrophilic ointment; a viscous organic solvent frequently used in pharmaceutical preparations to dissolve drug substances with limited aqueous solubility; used in part for preparing injectable solutions of diazepam, phenytoin, pentobarbital, and other drugs. (Source: Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary 2012)
Regular cigarettes or traditional cigarettes:
Electronic cigarettes, on the other hand, mainly contain 3 main ingredients:
Essentially an electronic cigarette has pretty much removed all harmful ingredients from a cigarette. It still satisfies the smoker’s craving of smoking. And the hand-to-mouth motion with generation of smoke like vapor gives a smoker full satisfaction as well. Further, one can gradually decrease the strength of the nicotine over time to have 0 nicotine in their e-cig, essentially resulting in completely quitting.
Taking good care of your battery will not only increase the life of your battery, it will produce thicker vapor and less frustration while using it. If your e-cig is not producing enough vapor, you can check our July month’s article My-battery-does-not-produce-any-vapor. Is-it-defective? for some helpful tips.
Some helpful tips that would increase your e-cig battery life:
1. Do not store or leave your battery in areas with high temperatures (e.g. outside in the sun) or low temperatures (e.g. outside in the night in colder areas, inside the refrigerator, etc) or high humidity (e.g. rainy conditions).
2. Avoid dropping your battery on a hard surface. Remember your e-cig has the same battery as your cell-phone. It may damage your e-cigarette battery completely.
3. Do not store your battery in pockets or other places with a lot of dust. Pocket lint can get inside the battery opening and cause the switch to malfunction. When not in use, carry your battery in a protective case.
4. Do not poke paperclips or other hard items inside the battery. Also do not use compressed air.
5. Charge the battery before it is totally drained. When you feel your battery is getting weak, just switch to a backup, charged battery and charge the weak one. A totally drained battery could result in much shorter life.
6. Make sure your hands are dry when using your e-cigarette.
7. While inhaling, try to keep your e-cigarette in or close to horizontal direction, else e-liquid may drip in the battery or leak into your mouth.
8. Unscrew the cartomizer from the e-cigarette battery when not in use.
9. Although leaving the battery to charge overnight will not damage the battery but it might shorten the life. So don’t let your battery charge for more than 4-5 hours at one time.
CLEANING YOUR BATTERY ON A REGULAR BASIS
Periodic cleaning of the batteries is strongly recommended as the contacts do become dirty under normal usage. We recommend you to follow these steps once or twice a week to keep the battery clean:
1. Using a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol, swab down the threads and contacts on the battery. Make sure the swab is not soaked, rather slightly damp to prevent the rubbing alcohol from damaging the battery internally. Make sure to wipe the swabbed-down areas with a dry paper towel and allow to dry completely before using again.
2. Roll a small piece of paper in such a way that it has a pointed end on one side. Use that end to clean any hard-to-reach areas near and around the contacts on the battery. Then blow off any lose dirt from that area.
3. Keep the LED side of the battery in your mouth (about half to one inch) and then blow hard onto it a couple of times. You may or may not see smoke coming out of the other side of the cartridge. Now flip the e-cig and try taking 2 or 3 strong puffs. Flip the e-cig again, keep the LED side in your mouth and try blowing again a couple of times. Try this couple of times. This often cleans up any blockage in the air passage.
Remember your battery has the same electronic battery inside that goes in the latest smart phones. So anything that could damage your phone could also damage your Electronic cigarette.
If you fill your own liquid in the cartridges, please refer to How-do-i-refill-a-blank-cartridge on how to fill you cartridge correctly. Incorrect filling could result in liquid dripping into the battery, rendering it useless.
1. Check Your Battery to see if it is sufficiently charged. Place the e-cig in your mouth backwards—with the LED side in your mouth and blow into the e-cig. This activates the battery. If the LED light comes on, your battery is working and doesn’t need to be charged. If it doesn’t light up, try charging the battery.
OR if the tip of your battery is blinking several times (about 5 times or so) when you drag on it, it needs to be recharged.
2. If you’ve checked that your battery is charged, and you still get no vapor, you may have a dud or clogged cartridge. It’s possible for a bit of dried e-juice to clog the cartridge. Take the cartridge in your hand, with the thread side facing down. Tap it forcefully on a hard surface, like a desk. This can help redistribute the some juice for optimal vapor production.
If that still doesn’t work, take the cartridge, screw it onto the battery, and blow into it. Do not inhale, as you normally would: blow out. This will activate the battery and heat up the cartridge. You should be able to feel it getting warm. Once it gets hot, it should burn off anything that’s clogging it up.
3. If that still doesn’t produce any vapor try this: With the cartridge screwed on to the battery, keep the LED side of the battery in your mouth (about half to one inch) and then blow hard onto it a couple of times. You may or may not see smoke coming out of the other side of the cartridge. Now flip the e-cig and try taking 2 or 3 strong puffs. Flip the e-cig again, keep the LED side in your mouth and try blowing again a couple of times. Try this couple of times and see if that makes a difference.
4. If you still get no vapor, try the same battery with one or two different cartridges. If still no vapor is produced, try using another battery with those cartridges. Depending on the combination, you should be able to identify if it is the battery or the cartridge that is defective.
If you have identified that it is the battery that is defective and it is a new battery, it is most likely defective. If it is the battery that you have been using for a while, it may just need a good cleaning
Note: If you fill your own liquid in the cartridges, it is possible any extra liquid might drip into the battery and cause short-circuit. Anytime, you feel that the any drop of e-liquid might have dropped inside the battery, unscrew the cartridge from the battery, hold the battery from the LED side and shake it (with the thread side downwards) like a thermometer to discard any e-juice. Then, let the battery dry for about a day or two. Once the liquid has dried off, it is likely that the battery starts to work again.
When it comes to refilling the cartridges, although it is a very simple process, we strongly recommend that you fully understand the process of refilling cartridges correctly because the spill or leakage of liquid on your hands or mouth could be dangerous. There are many Youtube videos on the Internet, which demonstrate that process. We recommend you to check them out and understand the process well before doing it.
In general, just open the white cap at the back of the cartridge (using a pin or a pen), turn the e-liquid bottle upside down onto the cartridge and drip a few drops of e-liquid. Be sure to hold the cartomizer at an angle as liquid dripped into the center tube will leak through the battery connector. Repeat the process until the filler material no longer absorbs liquid. In general, about 20-drops (1 ml) are needed per each refill. The first refill in a blank cartridge may require more liquid (20-25 drops). As the filler material becomes more saturated, it takes longer for the liquid to fully be absorbed. Therefore, a wait of several minutes toward the end of the process may be required to ensure the material is completely wet.
Dripping too fast when saturating the filling will result in liquid seeping out the battery connector end of the cartridge. Keep the battery connector end covered with the silicon rubber caps, often referred to as condoms, when filling to minimize leakage.
Put the white cap back and you should be back in business. Sometimes it is not a bad idea to let the cartridge sit for an hour or so to get the liquid completed soaked in.
If you are getting burnt smell and/or no vapor after filling the liquid, try adding a few more drops in the cartridge.
Folks,
Great news here from the MagicMist team: some of our products will soon be found in retail stores.
Mistic cartridges have been out of stock in Walmart and other retail locations (convenience stores, truck stops, etc.) for a while. We have delivered our Mirage cartridges to many store locations in the mid-west area.
Cigarette smoking is a true addiction. To grasp this well-documented fact, one really doesn’t have to study all the supporting scientific evidence. No other drug is self-administered with the persistence, regularity and frequency of a cigarette. At an average rate of ten puffs per cigarette, a one to three pack-a-day smoker inhales 70,000 to 200,000 individual doses of mainstream smoke during a single year. What makes a cigarette so irresistible obviously is the nicotine.
In contrast to other drugs, nicotine delivery from tobacco carries an ominous burden of chemical poisons and cancer-producing substances that boggle the mind. Many toxic agents are in a cigarette. However, additional toxicants are manufactured during the smoking process by the chemical reactions occurring in the glowing tip of the cigarette. The number is staggering: more than 4,000 hazardous compounds are present in the smoke that smokers draw into their lungs and which escapes into the environment between puffs.
The burning of tobacco generates more than 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, constituting the visible portion of cigarette smoke. According to chemists at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than the automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway. The lungs of smokers, puffing a daily ration of 20 to 60 low to high tar cigarettes, collect an annual deposit of one-quarter to one and one-half pounds of the gooey black material, amounting to a total of 15 to 90 million pounds of carcinogen-packed tar for the aggregate of current American smokers. Hence, tar is in a cigarette.
But visible smoke contributes only 5-8% to the total output of a cigarette. The remaining bulk that cannot be seen makes up the so-called vapor or gas phase of cigarette “smoke.” It contains, besides nitrogen and oxygen, a bewildering assortment of toxic gases, such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen oxides, to name just a few. Smokers efficiently extract almost 90% of the particulate as well as gaseous constituents (about 50% in the case of carbon monoxide) from the mainstream smoke of the 600 billion cigarettes consumed annually in the U.S. In addition, 2.25 million metric tons of sidestream smoke chemicals pollute the enclosed air spaces of homes, offices, conference rooms, bars, restaurants, and automobiles in this country. Hence, pollution is in a cigarette.
In addition, there is the chemical burden from sidestream smoke, afflicting smokers and non-smokers alike. Based on the reported concentrations in enclosed, cigarette smoke-polluted areas, the estimated intakes of nicotine, acrolein, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde peak at 200, 130, 75, 7, and 3 times the ADI, respectively. The high exposure to acrolein is especially unsettling. This compound is not only a potent respiratory irritant, but qualifies, according to current studies, as a carcinogen.
The witch’s brew of poisons invades the organs and tissues of smokers and nonsmokers, adults and children, born as well as unborn, and causes cancer, emphysema, heart disease, fetal growth retardation and other problems during pregnancy. The harm inflicted by all other addictions combined pales in comparison. Smoking-related illness, for example, claims in a few days as many victims as cocaine does in a whole year. Hence, disease is in a cigarette.
The irony is that many of the poisons found in cigarette smoke are subject to strict regulation by federal laws which, on the other hand, specifically exempt tobacco products. “Acceptable Daily Intake,” ADI, is the amount of a chemical an individual can be exposed to for an extended period without apparent detriment to health.
Regulatory policy aims at restricting exposure to carcinogens to a level where the lifetime risk of cancer would not exceed 1 in 100,000 to 1,000,000. Due to a limited database, approximate upper lifetime risk values could be calculated for only 7 representative cigarette smoke carcinogens. The risk values were extraordinarily high, ranging from 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 16. Because of the awesome amount of carcinogens found in cigarette smoke and the fact that carcinogens combine their individual actions in an additive or even multiplicative fashion, it is not surprising that the actual risk for lung cancer is as high as one in ten. Hence, cancer is in a cigarette.
Among the worst offenders are the nitrosamines. Strictly regulated by federal agencies, their concentrations in beer, bacon, and baby bottle nipples must not exceed 5 to 10 parts per billion. A typical person ingests about one microgram a day, while the smokers’ intake tops this by 17 times for each pack of cigarette smoked. In 1976, a rocket fuel manufacturer in the Baltimore area was emitting dimethylnitrosamine into the surrounding air, exposing the local inhabitants to an estimated 14 micrograms of the carcinogen per day. The plant was promptly shut down. However eagerly the government tries to protect us from outdoor pollution and the carcinogenic risk of consumer products, it blatantly suspends control if the offending chemical is in, or comes from, a cigarette. Hence, hypocrisy is in a cigarette.
But there is still more in a cigarette than addiction, poison, pollution, disease, and hypocrisy. A half century of aggressive promotion and sophisticated advertising that featured alluring role models from theater, film and sport, has invested the cigarette with an enticing imagery.
Imagery which captivates and seduces a growing youngster. The youngster, indispensable for being recruited into the future army of smokers, does not start to smoke cigarettes for the nicotine, but for the false promises they hold. Hence, deceit is in a cigarette.
In summary, no drug ever ingested by humans can rival the long-term debilitating effects of tobacco; the carnage perpetuated by its purveyors; the merciless irreversibility of destiny once the victim contracts lung cancer or emphysema; the militant denial on the part of those who, with the support of stockholders and the sanction of governments, legally push their lethal merchandise across borders and continents killing every year two and one-half to three million people worldwide. All things added together: death is in a cigarette.
MagicMist is now serving customers in Europe, Russia and neighbouring countries. For years MagicMist has serviced customers from across the ocean who have continued to be loyal customers in spite of high shipping fees.
Hence the company has launched its own UK based website www.theMagicMist.co.uk as of this past week. All orders are shipped out of London and customers can expect the same quality of products and customer service as they have been used to from the US based site.
Besides marketing its own branded kits, e-liquids and accessories presently MagicMist Europe is providing eCig cartridges and accessories compatible with brands:
As would be expected from MagicMist prices include taxes (VAT) and shipping is very affordable. Customer service continues to be world-class. Comes with the return guarantee and 10% off initial orders. If you are based out of Europe, Russia or nearby countries please check them out.
Michael Douglas – the famous hollywood star is no stranger to any reader out there. Starring in several memorable films such as Wall Street (Gordon Gecko – greed is good) and Basic Instincts he has led a full life with many achievements. In other words a Hollywood success story.
However one thing this hero could unfortunately not beat was his addiction to smoking (and drinking). Years of smoking and partying left him diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer. This was bad news no doubt but also good news in a way because at least it got detected. Two doctors who had inspected him had failed to diagnose and recognize that he actually had such an advanced stage of Cancer. This is particularly surprising given that he was actually a habitual smoker for many years.
Michael is a hollywood star but his story is actually quite common. Several patients who have been diagnosed with cancer or lesser throat/respiratory problems are told by their doctor to quit smoking. But they are unable to quit and continue to smoke in hiding. Many of us perhaps know of a close relative or friend who has done this.
More and more doctors are now attempting to convince their patients to use eCigs instead of traditional cigarettes. Kudos to Michael on beating cancer. Hopefully he has quit smoking by now.
