As a spate of vaping-related deaths grips the US, a teen with the mysterious illness says he has lungs ‘like a 70-year-old’.
If Adam Hergenreder’s case is anything to go by, the recent concerns over e-cigarettes are no joke.
The 18-year-old student athlete in Gurnee, Illinois, was hospitalised after a year-and-a-half of vaping. Now, according to doctors, he has lungs similar to those of a 70-year-old.
Check out the video of Adam Hergenreder below:
As reported by CNN, Hergenreder said:
It was scary to think about that – that little device did that to my lungs.
I was a varsity wrestler before this and I might not ever be able to wrestle because that’s a very physical sport and my lungs might not be able to hold that exertion… it’s sad.
The mysterious vaping-related illness has brought heat upon the e-cigarette industry: as reported by the Los Angeles Times, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are currently probing 450 cases of severe pulmonary disease to establish the link to vaping. They have called it ‘an outbreak’.
The majority of the cases involved people between 18 and 25 years old: according to The Guardian, an estimated nine million adults and 3.6 million teenagers in the US use e-cigarettes.
However, despite investigators still working to decipher the definitive cause of the illnesses, the Trump administration is making moves to ban flavoured vapes.
Following a meeting at the White House on Wednesday (September 11) with advisers including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Acting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Norman Sharpless, Trump told reporters that vaping was ‘a problem’.
As reported by Bloomberg, Trump said:
Not only is it a problem overall, but really specifically with respect for children. We may very well have to do something very, very strong about it.
Azar added that the FDA would soon issue regulatory guidance to remove flavoured vaping products from the market.
Health officials have also confirmed six deaths – in California, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon and Kansas – while another man in Utah was placed into a medically induced coma.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer has issued the following warning:
Today we’re issuing a warning to all residents about the use of these devices as potentially harmful to proper lung function, Stop vaping now.
After the number of cases doubled in the space of just one week, officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have also urged people to stop vaping.
As reported by People, CDC incident manager, Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, said:
While this investigation is ongoing, people should consider not using e-cigarette products.
People who do use e-cigarette products should monitor themselves for symptoms, for example, cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea and vomiting — and promptly seek medical attention for any health concerns.
Sharpless also echoed the calls for further regulation on flavoured e-cigarettes, saying they will use their full scope of authority to ‘tackle the health crisis’.
As reported by CNN, Sharpless said:
The tremendous progress we’ve made in reducing youth tobacco use in the US is jeopardized by this onslaught of e-cigarette use.
Nobody wants to see children becoming addicted to nicotine, and we will continue to use the full scope of our regulatory authority thoughtfully and thoroughly to tackle this mounting public health crisis.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.