Toting on those vape pipes can be deadly.

A recent study from the University of Southern California (USC) sees researchers there claiming that vapers, and the wider e-cigarette phenomenon, are prone to cancer and other chronic illnesses – just like smoking regular cigarettes.

The flavoured offerings, the study says, are particularly bad for you, causing cellular damage to the lungs.

The lead author of the study at USC, Dr Ahmad Besaratinia, said: “ For the first time, we showed that the more vapers used e-cigarettes and the longer they used them, the more DNA damage occurred in their oral cells.

“The devices and flavours that are most popular and highly consumed by youth vapers, as well as adults, are the ones that are associated with the DNA damage.”

The study’s findings were published in the Nicotine & Tobacco Research Journal.

Vaping took off around 2014, so there isn’t a long history of its effects and a list of confirmed cases of cancer due to this method of inhaling nicotine.

A 2019 study of mice showed that e-cigarette vapour caused cellular damage to the lungs and bladders of the mice and inhibited the repair of DNA in lung tissue.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that vapers can develop lung cancer from inhaling the chemicals in the vape liquid, as well as from the heavy metals from the vape coil leaching into the vape liquid.

The THANC Foundation says, “When these chemicals are aerosolised and breathed into the lungs, it causes heavy metal poisoning and ultra-fine particle pollution, which causes tissue damage. It is theorised that the unrepaired tissue is what leads to cancer.”

The THANC Foundation makes clear that most e-cigarette users are young, under 35 but lung and oral cancer isn’t revealed or discovered until they are 65 or older.

Some scientists have seen a new disease known as E-cigarette or Vaping-use Associated Lung Injury (EVALI).

A study by researchers at New York University’s (NYU) College of Dentistry in 2020 and published in iScience unveiled that vaping from e-cigarettes leaves high quantities of bad bacteria in the mouth which increases the risk of infection.

Speaking to the Insider, lead researcher of the NYU study, Professor Deepak Saxena said: “ E-Cigarettes are a pretty new product as compared to traditional cigarettes and still they can influence the oral microenvironment which can lead to larger health problems like cavities, oral infections, bad breath and oral cancer.”