Ok, that’s a bit clearer and I now understand what you are saying, thanks. Where do you get this information? I’m not a medical professional or any kind of expert, all i know about this is some stuff I’ve read over the last year and a bit since I started inhaling eliquid. But most of what you posted in your reply there conflicts with pretty much everything I’ve read about it. It’s of interest to me, because it’s ultimately a matter of making an informed decision about our habits and the impact they might have on our health. If you could provide something to back up the following points it would be very useful.
* BO as a term used to describe a class of illnesses.
I can’t find anything that says this. All of the studies, articles and info I’ve read describe BO as a distinct disease with different characteristics from other restricted airway conditions such as copd. It’s described as a rare condition with relatively quick onset of symptoms that affects people who have had transplants and people who have inhaled toxic fumes.
* The government blog post: this post clearly states that BO (not “one type of BO”) is a rare disease that has been contracted by people working in industrial conditions exposing them to diacetyl and that smoking is not a risk factor. Here is a quote from it:
some flavourings used in e-liquids to provide a buttery flavour contain the chemical diacetyl, which at very high levels of exposure has been associated with the serious lung disease bronchiolitis obliterans... It had been detected in some e-liquid flavourings in the past, but at levels hundreds of times lower than in cigarette smoke. Even at these levels, smoking is not a major risk factor for this rare disease.
I think it's important to clarify this as what you are saying goes against everything I’ve seen written about this, and if you’re right it would imply that smoking and potentially vaping (with diacetyl containing liquids) actually are risk factors for developing BO/popcorn lung.
This is not to say that potentially smokers may have had BO and that it’s been diagnosed as something else. It would seem unlikely to me from what I’ve read, but not impossible. And we will never know, at least in terms of the majority of these people, who will have died.
And again i’m not an expert, just an interested layperson who vapes.