The insurance sector needs to do more to recognise the harmful effects of vaping in the underwriting processes.
This is according to Nicola Draper, research consultant at Crystalise, who addressed delegates on the first afternoon of Health & Protection’s third annual IPMI Summit at Sopwell House in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
Draper revealed that nicotine is a “very harmful” compound found in nearly all vapes.
“Nicotine has been purported, particularly by the tobacco industry, to be harmless – but it’s not harmless,” Draper said.
“It’s a very harmful compound. Once it enters your bloodstream, that’s when it starts to do its dirty work on your pleasure centre.
“They release adrenalin which in turn releases dopamine and that’s why smokers can experience a high.
“So it activates that whole neural circuitry.”
Impact not completely understood
And on the physiological side, she added that exposure to nicotine acts on the cardiovascular system – the heart and all of the body’s blood vessels – increasing the heart rate and blood pressure as well as causing narrowing of the arteries.
But a further concern comes in the form of the “multitude” of different flavours and solvents within vape products, Draper continued.
This is because these flavours can contain a number of different chemicals.
And while vape liquids can appear quite harmless enabling them to get through regulatory processes, when they are heated they produce “nasty” compounds such as formaldehyde, Draper explained.
“The powerful effects are really not understood partly because of the multitude of different flavours,” Draper said.
“And of course we have no long term studies. We’ve understood smoking for years.
“The first smoking reports in the UK came out in the 1950s that told us smoking and lung cancer are closely associated and must be correlated.”
Promoting harmful impact of vaping
And when asked whether insurers, and potentially advisers, should more openly promote the harmful impact of vaping on customers in underwriting, Draper replied they should.
“I know one of the issues I had from working with clients from way back is how do you frame that question to the customer,” she continued.
“So asking someone if they are a smoker is just a rubbish question.
“The question should be have you ever used cigarettes or vape? So it really is starting with how do you frame that?
“But it probably does need to be part of the process because vapes are not harmless, it’s as simple as that.”