E-Cigarette: 49-Year-Old Woman Suffers Incurable Cobalt Lung Disease

In yet another vaping-related health problem, doctors have now diagnosed a 49-year-old Californian woman with a rare condition, Hard-metal pneumoconiosis aka Cobalt Lung.

By far only reported among metal workers, the rare lung disease has been caused by the vape pen she had been using. The ‘ZenPen’ user was presented with symptoms linked to more than 2,000 cases of vaping-related illnesses including coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath.

When pathologists observed the woman’s lung tissue, they found a pattern typically found in hard-metal lung disease instead of a typical lung injury associated with the use of e-cigarettes.

"It has a distinctive and unusual appearance that is not observed in other diseases," NBC News quoted the case report’s co-author Dr. Kirk Jones, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. "When we diagnose it, we are looking for occupational exposure to metal dust or vapor, usually cobalt, as a cause."

The patient who was a dog-walker by profession had no chances of exposure to hard metals but had only been vaping using the ZenPen. Since these products do not usually come with pre-filled cartridges, users purchase the e-liquid at other places.

Upon testing the e-liquid left in the device, the doctors found several metals including cobalt, nickel, lead, aluminum, chromium, and manganese. And the inhalation of cobalt, in particular, has caused permanent scarring of the woman’s lungs. According to her doctors, although her lung function might improve, the damage to her lungs is permanent.

The inclusion of vitamin E acetate to e-liquids has also been connected in many cases of vaping-related lung injury cases, especially those that involved Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). But the doctors did not evaluate this woman’s vape pen for vitamin E acetate.

The doctors opined that the metals present in the e-liquid might have leached from the heating coil in the vape pen device. Vaping marijuana increases this risk of toxic metals’ leaching since the vape pens must be heated to higher temperatures to aerosolize THC compared to what’s needed to aerosolize nicotine.

This case report points to an urgent requirement for regulating vaping devices. Given the increasing trend towards legalizing cannabis for recreational and pain management purposes, the authors convey that the public health implications of this phenomenon are substantial.