Cuttwood Sugar Bear

The label reads "Hand Crafted Los Angeles CA". The flavor profile:  Sugar Bear has a Sugary Cinnamon inhale paired with a Smooth Creamy body on the exhale. Reminiscent of your favorite Cinnabuns! After vaping it, I definitely give it sugar and cinnamon. It is precisely those flavors and it does it very well, maybe one of the best I've had so far in this profile. It is a little heavy on the cinnamon and might benefit from more of a sugary note or blended with creme. It might be amazing mixed with a creamy custard. It just needs something to cut the heavy cinnamon, which don't get me wrong, is spot on. It is like someone stuffed a cinnamon stick in my dripper. It fortunately avoids the fake cinnamon gum flavor I've had in other juices. I would not describe it as a cinnabun, though. It is missing the darker caramel note. With this, imagine a snickerdoodle, cinnamon toast crunch cereal, or cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on toast. It is pleasant and accurate. I'd give it a 9 out of 10. Look out for another great flavor they make, Unicorn Milk. It beats the pants off the similar Mother's Milk. Nails strawberry milk or strawberry custard like some old school Nesquik. They also make a melon juice that I have not tried. Cuttwood keeps their juice choices few, but excellent. 

Health Risks of Vaping Debunked: A Series

ScienceNews reported analysis of numerous tests on electronic cigarettes in academic journals. This article from Nicotine and Tobacco Research concludes that the higher the voltage on mods, aka the higher the temperature that you vape your juice, the more toxic volatile compounds will be released. One of the first assumptions that stood out to me was the temperature 350 degrees Celsius that researchers pulled from two other studies. They stated, "It has been estimated that theoretical vaporization temperature of the heating element may reach up to 350^oC." For all you warm blooded, non-scientific, 'Muricans out there, that's 662 degrees Fahrenheit. Seems a little steep just to get some juice to boil when water takes a third of that temperature. Finding separate corroboration proves to be slightly difficult. I found an MSDS on another site that reported the boiling and thermal decomposition temperature of vegetable glycerin to be 290^oC. It is also advised that, "irritating and highly toxic gases may be generated by thermal decomposition or combustion." Its seems that the researchers are at least in the same city as the ballpark. The MSDS for propylene glycol reported a boiling point of 187^oC and no information for the thermal decomposition. Dow, the chemical and whatever-else-they-do-in-those-labs-probably-trying-to-take-over-the-world guys, have an interesting summary of another study of the degradation of aqueous propylene glycol. The study was conducted to measure the effect of PG on oxidation of copper and aluminum alloys. When slightly heated to no more than around 101^oC, PG broke down into lactic, formic, and acetic acids, even when exposed to no metal. At that temperature after 2000 hours, formic and acetic acid seemed to be on a steady incline around 40 ppm. Lactic acid, a naturally occurring substance in common foods, was found in much higher amounts after 2000 hours at 180 ppm and exponentially increasing. Before you worry, your body already handles lactic acid on its own by breaking it down in the liver. Humans are exposed to higher-than-normal amounts when they go on a cheese binge or have low oxygen in the blood due to strenuous activity. The EPA classifies it as a low toxicity pesticide. Nicotine is also a pesticide, though. The moral of this story, boys and girls, is that other potentially toxic compounds are released when both PG and VG are heated. The same can be said for smoking, or eating, or running, though. Dow also reports the gaseous release of glycol esters in circumstances outside of thermal decomposition. That certainly does not mean your e-juice will react in exactly the same way. It just gives an idea of what is possible. To conclude, does it take 350 degrees of Celsius to heat up that delicious juice? Probably not. Is your balls to the wall sub-sub-sub-ohm hextuple "dragon inception unicorn" coil small-d**k compensation method going way to far for what is needed? I'd put my money on "yes". A future continuation of this series will try to answer just how much safer vaping can be than smoking.