Reuters reports that “American adults are more likely to use e-cigarettes when they have children at home, especially when kids have asthma, a U.S. study” published in JAMA Pediatrics suggests. Nationally, “4.4 percent of adults reported current e-cigarette use in 2016 and 2017, the study found,” but “the proportion was higher – 4.9 percent – among adults with kids, and higher still – 5.6 percent – among adults who lived with a child with asthma.” Reuters adds that “kids may be more vulnerable to exposure to second-hand e-cigarette vapors than adults, said Alex Prokhorov of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.” Prokhorov said by email, “Children’s bodies and brains are still developing and fragile. … Childhood is the time period when organs and tissues are particularly vulnerable to the multiple compounds identified in e-cigarette’s aerosol, and this is especially true for those kids who suffer of asthma and other chronic diseases.”

CNN reports that, on the difference in e-cigarette use rates, “the authors say this could reflect ‘the relatively young age of e-cigarette users’ and the perception that vaping is safer than smoking combustible cigarettes.” The rates of adult e-cigarette use “changed from place to place, from 2.3% in the District of Columbia to 7.7% in Oklahoma.” Rates “of vaping among adults isn’t very different from that of middle schoolers, which was 4.9% in 2018, according to a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

From the news release of the American Association for Justice.