Dr Anthea Rhodes on the harms of vaping

Dr Anthea Rhodes shares information about the harms of vaping.

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I'm Doctor Anthea Rhodes.

I'm a developmental paediatrician and a public health researcher.

I lead a project called the Child Health Poll, where we ask parents and families across Australia about current child health issues and challenges and in the last five years, vaping has come up a lot.

Vaping is harmful to your health in a number of ways.

The first main way relates to the lungs.

So when someone vapes, they breathe in a lot of tiny, tiny chemicals that have been aerosolised by the vaping device and those chemicals are irritating to the lungs, so that can show up in things like breathlessness or persistent cough.

So the other main way that vapes cause harm is from nicotine, and this is the addictive substance contained in most vape liquid.

And that has an impact on the brain, and it's particularly bad for brains in teenagers and young adults.

That's because when the brain is developing, really the system of messaging that goes between the brain cells and parts of the body is still developing.

And if you interrupt that system with a chemical like nicotine, you can rewire it in some way.

And that means that young person is at a much greater risk of addiction in the 1st place and in fact lifelong addiction and use.

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For more information visit health.gov.au/vaping.

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