There never was a popcorn lung outbreak in vapes. Lipid pneumonia is not popcorn lung. Freebase nicotine is water soluable so it's always been dissolved with glycol. THC is fat soluable so it was what was causing the lipid pneumonia. Popcorn lung is a very specific disease caused by diacetyl and I'm unaware of any cases of that in vapes, none the less an outbreak. There was never going to be a lipid pneumonia with nicotine though, because nicotine does not dissolve in oil and we use vegetable glycol as a thickener because of that.

Popcorn lung was largely a concern for DIY vapes in the early days that used food additives haphazardly to create flavors. The dangers of diacetyl were recognized quite early though and folks made sure they weren't using it.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Just to tag on, the only real "widespread" (read: more than a few freak cases of something I haven't heard about) issue was specifically Vitamin E Acetate in black market illegally produced THC vape carts (sources vary whether the carts were either from China or from some midwesterner's kitchens.)

You're correct there has never been a case of popcorn lung due to vaping, the only recorded cases I'm aware of involved a popcorn manufacturing plant using a powdered version with no respirators, and from what I understand it basically works like butter flavored mesothelioma (the powder settles in lungs and doesn't get exhaled, which doesn't happen if it's not powdered, or if you use respirators...I think.) In any case, there also will never be a case of popcorn lung from vaping, and I say this because there's never been a case of popcorn lung from smoking cigarettes which coincidentally happen to contain 2,000x the amount of diacetyl as vape juice ever did (and that's before vapes largely stopped using it due to the propaganda on it, which was spread by big tobacco and big pharma to boost their cigarettes and chantix sales btw.)

I vaped at the time and had to rant this shit at some old guy who was holding a cig at the bar saying "ooohhh popcorn lung" at least 3x weekly for months, like "shut up and drink your Bud and smoke that Camel there, COPDeez nuts."

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yeah they were using vitamin e acetate as a thickener instead of vegetable glycol, which caused lipid (fat) pneumonia where the lungs aren't producing enough surfactant to clear the oils that get trapped. My opinion on why is because they were using THC ethanol tincture which is cheap to produce but would require significant thickening. The vitamin e acetate was used for that.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks to both of you for the added context and corrections. My memory was very vague, I did remember the Vitamin E thing. I had also forgotten it was the THC vapes that were the issue.