© 2024 Western New York Public Broadcasting Association

140 Lower Terrace
Buffalo, NY 14202

Mailing Address:
Horizons Plaza P.O. Box 1263
Buffalo, NY 14240-1263

Buffalo Toronto Public Media | Phone 716-845-7000
WBFO Newsroom | Phone: 716-845-7040
Your NPR Station
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

New York’s e-cigarette ban throws URMC research into question

A bin of vape products to be tested at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Irfan Lab.
Denise Young
/
WXXI News
A bin of vape products to be tested at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Irfan Lab.

As the number of deaths and injuries attributed to e-cigarettes continues to rise, a lab at the University of Rochester Medical Center is dissecting the devices -- but their ability to do that research is in question.

Irfan Rahman’s laboratory sits at the end of a long hallway on the third floor of the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Inside, Rahman and a team of researchers take apart e-cigarettes. They analyze the liquids that the devices turn into inhalable vapors in an effort to figure out exactly what those vapors are made of.

A bin of vape products to be tested at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Irfan Lab.
Credit Denise Young / WXXI News
/
WXXI News
A bin of vape products to be tested at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Irfan Lab.

The lab’s work has taken on growing importance as thenumber ofdeaths and injuries attributed to e-cigarettes across the country continues to rise.

“We are the national leaders in this research,” Rahman said. “We are doing work here that can save lives. These are very, very grave health problems.”

But New York state’s action to ban flavored e-cigarettes last week threw their ability to do that research into question.

The state’semergency regulationsban possession of flavored e-cigarette liquids, with no exemption for research.

URMC shares a $19 millionfederal grantwith the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo that funds the institutions’ research into e-cigarettes. It’s an emerging field that investigators said is designed around questions of how flavored tobacco products affect the body and mind.

The realization that the rules did not carve out an exception for researchers led the CEOs of Roswell Park and URMC to send ajoint letterto Howard Zucker, the commissioner of the state health department, urging him to allow their research to continue.“This is the first ever federally funded research to look at flavored tobacco in such a comprehensive and systematic way,” the CEOs wrote. “The outcomes of these studies will have significant implications for public health nationally.”

In the days after the CEOs sent their letter to the state health department, leaders from the research teams at Roswell Park and URMC met in Buffalo with representatives from federal agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Cancer Institute. The researchers outlined their concerns that New York’s new regulations would cut off their ability to investigate e-cigarettes under their federal grant.

The conference was routine and scheduled prior to the state’s ban on possessing e-cigarettes, but discussion about the ban and its lack of a research exemption was added to the agenda, according to attendees.

Irfan Rahman runs the URMC lab that investigates the health effects of flavored e-cigarette use.
Credit Denise Young / WXXI News
/
WXXI News
Irfan Rahman runs the URMC lab that investigates the health effects of flavored e-cigarette use.

The federal agencies were in a tough position, Rahman said, because they were funding research in New York that might have just been banned under the state’s new rules.

Underscoring the confusion caused by the new regulations, a spokesperson for the National Cancer Institute said “we do not know at this time” how the rules will affect their research.

The New York state health department offered some clarification Wednesday when spokesperson Jill Montag wrote in an email to WXXI News that the regulations apply “to retailers, distributors and manufacturers, not to accredited research institutions,” though neither the word “accredited” nor the phrase “research institutions” appears anywhere in the text of the rules.

“The health department is responsible for enforcing the ban,” Montag said in a subsequent phone call, explaining that the department’s interpretation of the regulation excludes research institutions from the ban.

Roswell Park spokesperson Annie Deck-Miller said researchers there expect the state will develop an exemption for possession of e-cigarette products used in research, and URMC communications chief Chip Partner said state officials “have made clear in unofficial communications that the ban is intended to restrict the commercial sale of flavored e-cigarettes, not scientific studies or other research.”

But Rahman said he has yet to receive any official guidance from the state. 

“That makes it hard,” he said. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”

Irfan Rahman, director of a lab that studies e-cigarettes at the University of Rochester Medical Center, buys flavored tobacco products at local smoke shops to test for toxicity.
Credit Brett Dahlberg / WXXI News
/
WXXI News
Irfan Rahman, director of a lab that studies e-cigarettes at the University of Rochester Medical Center, buys flavored tobacco products at local smoke shops to test for toxicity.

The confusion has also led to researchers stocking up on e-cigarette products while they are still available to the public.

Rahman shops local for his lab. He buys flavored e-cigarette liquids from retailers in and around Rochester to break them down and examine their toxicity.

If the exemption does not come through, Rahman said, he may not be able to buy the products that he needs for his research, and he may have to surrender what he already has. So earlier this week, after work, Rahman drove to a half-dozen vape shops in Monroe County to buy whatever they had in stock.

“It’s constantly changing,” Rahman said. “This is a very quickly moving field. We need to stay up-to-date.”

Youth use of e-cigarettes has reached "epidemic" proportions nationally, according to the FDA. It's risen 160% in New York state over the last five years,the health department said.

AMonroe County surveyof public school students found 45% of high school seniors said they'd used vape products. Nearly a third said they'd used them in the last month.At least eight people nationwide have died of illnesses or lung injuries that federal authorities have connected to vaping, with hundreds falling ill over the past months. Investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what is causing the deaths, but they suspect illicit marijuana-laced products, not flavored e-cigarettes.

Still, researchers that WXXI News spoke with don’t believe that flavored e-cigarettes are safe. But they do say they might not be as lethal as conventional cigarettes or the black-market e-cigarettes that they have linked to the hospitalizations of dozens of people in western and central New York.

The state’s regulations “have the unintended consequence of cutting off necessary materials” to research e-cigarettes at a time when that research “is more important than ever,” the CEOs of Roswell Park and URMC wrote in their letter to the state health department.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq5tAZUd7C8

Copyright 2019 WXXI News

Brett is the health reporter and a producer at WXXI News. He has a master’s degree from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and before landing at WXXI, he was an intern at WNYC and with Ian Urbina of the New York Times. He also produced freelance reporting work focused on health and science in New York City. Brett grew up in Bremerton, Washington, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Brett Dahlberg