Student collapses while vaping in school toilets due to massive nicotine dose

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Student collapses while vaping in school toilets due to massive nicotine dose

By Jordan Baker

A Blue Mountains Grammar student collapsed and had a seizure in the school toilets while vaping due to a massive dose of nicotine.

The school’s deputy headmaster and head of senior school Owen Laffin wrote to parents saying the student was otherwise perfectly healthy. The school had become increasingly aware of growing vape, or e-cigarette use, among students.

“I write to our whole community today in order to highlight the extraordinary dangers of vaping and to urge parents to discuss them with your children,” said the letter, sent last Monday.

Vapes are flavoured and designed to appeal to young people.

Vapes are flavoured and designed to appeal to young people.Credit:Sanghee Liu

“Last week, an otherwise perfectly healthy senior student collapsed in the toilets, experienced an extended seizure and was taken to hospital by ambulance after using a vape. Medical evidence suggests that the seizure was caused by a massive dose of nicotine.

“While I am profoundly grateful to say that the student has now recovered, the risk of head injury or hypoxia-induced brain damage are terrible to contemplate.”

Australian National University Professor Emily Banks, a public health physician and epidemiologist, said her team’s review of the global evidence on e-cigarettes found the risks included seizures due to nicotine toxicity.

“Those disposable devices are very strong and have high doses of nicotine in them,” she said. “Some of those pods have the nicotine equivalent of ten packets of cigarettes.”

Emergency department doctors were seeing people with nicotine-related seizures, but such incidents were not yet captured in the data system. “There’s a project under way to look at poisoning and ways to count these things,” Professor Banks said.

“People feel sick, they can vomit, lightheaded. The seizures are the thing people are most worried about. There has been the odd case of people having heart rhythm problems – it is one of the documented hazards.” There had been one reported case of a cardiac arrest, Professor Banks said.

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In Geelong earlier this year, a five-year-old boy was taken to hospital after vaping with his brother and a seven-year-old classmate at school. It left the boy struggling to breathe, and he was taken to hospital by ambulance after having a coughing fit so intense he vomited four times.

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The boy’s father said the vape belonged to the friend of a classmate, who took it to school and offered it to the other children, saying it tasted “like grapes”.

Recent figures from the NSW Population Health survey showed rising rates of vaping among under 25s, prompting fears that decades of work to reduce smoking rates could be undone.

Eleven per cent of people aged 16 to 24 reported being a current user of e-cigarettes, or “vapes”, more than double the number in 2020.

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