Kansas reports ninth US death from vaping illness

Kansas health officials have confirmed a second death in the state tied to a vaping-related lung disease, bringing the total number of U.S. deaths to nine.

Kansas currently has nine probable or confirmed vaping related cases, including the two deaths, but officials still do not know what is causing people to become sick. The lung disease has sickened more than 530 people across the country.

“People are dying from vaping, and there’s hundreds of new cases each week of serious and fatal lung injuries from vaping,” Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman said in a video on the agency’s web site. 

{mosads}“We used to think that vaping was a fairly straightforward way of weaning off nicotine, but with young people vaping now and even older people doing it, there’s lots of illnesses, and curiously we don’t even know with 100 percent certainty what’s causing it,” Norman said.

According to state health officials, the latest death was a male over the age of 50 who had underlying health conditions. Farah Ahmed, a state epidemiologist, said officials don’t yet know the type of e-cigarette or what substances the patient was using at the time of his death.

“We know that in vaping solutions, there’s oils like Vitamin E acetate which is the one that’s thought to be probably contributing, there’s heavy metals, there’s poisons,” Norman said. “And we know that it looks like an oil infused into the lungs that is causing this, but the compound has not been 100 percent identified.”

Of the cases identified in Kansas, five are male and four are female and range in age from 17 to 67 years old. All were hospitalized, five have been released from the hospital and two remain hospitalized, health officials said. 

Regarding the types of vaping products used, people reported using only nicotine, only THC, only CBD and a combination of THC and nicotine.

The number of vaping-related illnesses has spiked dramatically. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half of the people who have become sick across the country are younger than 25, and 16 percent are younger than 18. Officials said nearly three-quarters of the patients are males. 

This week, federal health officials are testifying in front of two separate House committees about the public health threats from vaping.