A mom who lost her son to vaping has spoken out in warning about the 'false sense of security' with vapes and why it's not just your lungs you should be worried about.
On December 12 last year, Danny Clark from Chester, Pennsylvania, passed away at the age of 34 after vaping for little over a year.
He'd taken up vaping more frequently in October 2023 as a result of his girlfriend apparently not liking the smell of the smoke as well as believing it's a 'safer option' - previously having around 'a pack-a-day' of cigarettes.
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But then at the end of 2024, Danny's mom, Cindi, was left in 'total shock' when she got a call from her older son to inform her Danny had passed away - all the family aware of is that he 'went to bed and he didn't wake up'.
Danny's symptoms before he passed
The night before he passed away, Danny's girlfriend told Cindi he was experiencing slurred speech alongside a lack of balance.
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His family questioned whether he'd been drinking alcohol, however, an autopsy later revealed Danny's organs 'looked fine'.
It was ascertained that Danny had died as a result of suffering a sudden cardiac arrest caused by a particular element of the vapes.
The autopsy's results
Danny's 'lungs didn't look terrible', even despite him having smoked for most of his life, and the vapes didn't impact his breathing nor cause him to get so-called popcorn lung.
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However, the medical examiner reportedly then questioned Danny's girlfriend as to what strength of vapes he was using and how frequently he would puff away on the device.
"His girlfriend said that he would have it on the nightstand next to him when he went to bed so if we woke up [in the night] he would vape." Cindi noted.
The medical examiner ultimately found the 'amount of nicotine' in Danny's body was 'three times the level' and that he had experienced nicotine poisoning.
Cindi explained: "The impairment that he was showing [before he died], were all signs of the nicotine being so high in the bloodstream that it started impairing his nervous system - he was slurring his speech, and he was having trouble with balance and coordination.
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"Ultimately he went to bed and it caused a heart attack."
The mom is now taking the tragedy and trying to spread important awareness to stop it from happening to anyone else's loved ones.
Danny's mom's warning
Cindi reflected that it felt like Danny and their family were 'cheated' as Danny thought 'vaping was the healthier option'.
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"He would have been so p***ed off [if he knew it would kill him] and I felt the same way," she said.
She noted how much of a 'pure form' of nicotine vapes are, which she thinks makes them 'so much more addictive than even cigarettes are', while further suggesting that putting anything in your body that's 'not natural' is a risk.
She said she doesn't believe 'the risks [of vaping] are spelled out as quickly as they should be', adding: "I also don't think that there's any kind of monitoring on all of the devices and the percentage of nicotine that they get in their system.
"There's no regulation on that at all so people are basically just getting addicted to this thing and it's toxic and they can just keep putting more and more and more in their system without any idea of what's happening as a result of it."
While any cases of lung issues caused by vaping have been documented in the news, Cindi hopes to raise more awareness around nicotine poisoning, calling for tighter regulations.
She resolved: "It's a false sense of security - people think they're not coughing, or they don't have pain in their chest but people don't know what's happening in other areas.
"[...] Something needs to be done about it. It can't keep going on like this."
Topics: Health, Vaping, US News, Parenting, Pennsylvania
Poppy Bilderbeck