The EITC differs from the minimum wage in that the EITC is paid as a lump sum to eligible families once a year after they file their taxes, typically between February and April.To examine whether we find a similar pattern in the estimated reductions in mortality, we estimate a set of models of suicide mortality by calendar month of death. The results, shown in Appendix figure 4, do indicate that the estimated effects are larger in March relative to other calendar months. While these point estimates are not statistically significantly different from each other, the pattern is consistent with a substantial lump sum of money relieving distress and despair. As we would expect given the nature of the policy, no similar pattern is found for minimum wages. Finally, we address the issue of possible policy complementarities: EITCs could be a more effective anti-poverty policy when pre-tax wages are higher. Similarly, a high binding minimum wage could help counteract downward pressure on wages that might otherwise arise in equilibrium as higher EITCs increase labor supply. To estimate whether such policy complementarities have effects on mortality, we estimate augmented regression specifications: We expand equation to include an interaction term between the log minimum wage and state EITC policy.Overall, these models fail to give consistent indications of policy complementarities. The estimated main effect coefficients on the minimum wage and the EITC remain similar,cannabis grow set up though the point estimate for the EITC is no longer statistically significant. The interaction term meanwhile is close to zero.

Between 1999 and 2017, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths increased by 256 percent, while suicides grew by 33 percent . U.S. health policy makers and researchers across a broad array of disciplines have sought to understand the causes of and effective policy responses to these disconcerting mortality trends. Here, we summarize the ongoing debate, then discuss briefly how our findings contribute to this discussion. Case and Deaton suggest declining economic opportunity among working class whites as a cause, pointing to an accompanying increase in chronic pain, social distress and the deterioration of institutions such as marriage and childbearing. Case further notes that inflows of cheap heroin and fentanyl followed the initial opioid epidemic. In Case’s interpretation, these three epidemics have interacted with ongoing poor economic conditions for less-educated workers, increasing the number of deaths that she would characterize as deaths of despair. Case and Deaton’s compelling description of the correlates of observed mortality trends builds upon on a large literature of previous work showing the importance of economic factors on mental health, alcohol use, substance abuse and premature mortality. Our findings for suicide are consistent with other recent research identifying economic correlates of suicide– nonemployment, lack of health insurance, home foreclosures and debt crises . For example, higher incomes generated by minimum wage increases have been shown to substantially improve credit ratings, reducing the cost of credit and easing debt problems . On the other hand, an emerging literature has questioned the focus on economic causes. For example, in an examination of U.S. mortality trends from 1980 to 2014, Masters and colleagues find little evidence of the distress and despair hypothesis, arguing that Case and Deaton’s analysis masks important gender heterogeneity in mortality rates that are inconsistent with the despair narrative. They suggest that more likely causes include the U.S. obesity epidemic, the current prescription opioid crisis, and the lagged effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Ruhm focuses on mortality increases due to fatal drug overdoses . He also concludes that drug-related deaths are not primarily caused by economic conditions.

Rather, his results point toward “supply-side” characteristics, such as drug availability and costs, as the primary causes of higher death rates. Ruhm’s conclusions are supported by the recent surge in drug overdose deaths attributable to the spread of prescription opioid substitutes, such as heroin and synthetic fentanyl. The increase in poisoning deaths associated with these drugs and the dramatic rise in overdose deaths among men and young adults relative to other demographic groups does suggest that poor economic conditions constitute only a part of the explanation of declining life expectancy . Finkelstein and colleagues arrive at similar conclusions. Leveraging data on cross-county migration among disabled Medicare beneficiaries, these authors demonstrate the importance in opioid abuse rates of place-specific supply factors as opposed to demand-side factors. Our estimated panel models do not find effects of higher minimum wages or EITCs on drug overdoses, whether unintentional or intentional. These results support the claims made by Ruhm, Finkelstein and others. Meanwhile, we do find that these same policies significantly reduce non-drug suicides, supporting the claims made by Case and Deaton. In conclusion, we note that the magnitude of changes to EITCs and minimum wages across our sample period since 1999 are not large enough to explain aggregate changes in mortality. Furthermore, the recent 2014-17 period of life expectancy decline occurred at a time of only slightly declining real federal minimum wage and increasing minimum wages in various states. Nevertheless, we estimate a substantial public health benefit of expanding the EITC and increasing minimum wages, suggesting the importance of pursuing demand-side income policies to combat the high and increasing levels of deaths of despair. After the 2019–2020 outbreak of e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 2,800 hospitalizations of patients displaying symptoms of acute respiratory distress, serious public health concerns have been raised about the safety of e-cigarettes. In the initial investigations, evidence has supported that vaping of vitamin E acetate , a synthetic form of vitamin E that was used to “cut” or dilute black market or homemade tetrahydrocannabinol , was a major cause of the onset of EVALI symptoms.

Several different mechanisms of toxicity have been proposed since the outbreak, yet the exact causative agents and molecular mechanisms through which VEA vaping emissions resulted in lung toxicity are still not well understood. VE and VEA alone are considered safe for dermatological application in skin-care products and as well as for consumption in foods and dietary supplements.Several studies since the outbreak, however, have found that e-liquids like VEA undergo major thermal decomposition during the vaping process to form products that are often more toxic than the parent oil VEA in particular has been found to decompose into a wide range of emission products including VE, alkenes such as 1-pristene, alcohol-containing compounds such as 3,7,11-trimethyl-1-dodecanol, durohydroquinone , and durohydroquinone monoacetate, and carbonyl-containing compounds such as ketene, 4-acetoxy-2,3,5-trimethyl-6-methylene-2,4-cyclohexadienone, and duroquinone. Still, the overall risk of exposure of each identified product to those who vaped VEA is unclear. For example, ketene gas has been hypothesized to form from the cleavage of the acetate group of VEA. However, this reaction has been calculated to only be feasible at temperatures exceeding 500˚C–temperatures that are likely to only occur under “dry puff” conditions. The operating temperature of the vape device is one of many parameters–including the model of e-cigarette used, puff duration, interval between puffs, etc.–that a user may alter to customize their vaping experience. A few studies to date have investigated the impact of increased temperature on the size and volume distribution of emitted vaping aerosols, reporting that greater coil temperatures result in larger puff volumes, but decrease the size of emitted particles. A recent study in 2021 found that the emission of volatile degradation products, including various carbonyl-containing species,horticulture rack was significantly enhanced when temperature was increased from 170 to 280˚C. In addition, increased coil temperature and characteristics of the vape device have also been found to influence other aspects of vaping emissions, such as the release of metals and the level of carbonyl-containing compounds or radical species . E-cigarette atomizers and heating elements are often comprised of various transition metals including nickel, iron, and chromium which not only pose a risk of metal toxicity to vape users, but may play a role in the catalysis of thermal degradation of the e-liquid. One study by Saliba et al. found that e-cigarette filament wires had a significant impact on the production of carbonyl-containing compounds from propylene glycol vaping, lowering the temperature required to form carbonyl species by nearly 200˚C. However, the factors affecting the chemical composition of e-cigarette degradation products have yet to be fully characterized. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of variable temperature on the product distribution of e-cigarette vaping emissions, using VEA as a model e-liquid. To do so, we performed a non-targeted analysis of the aerosol-phase constituents at relevant, mid-range vaping temperatures using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry . We hypothesized that elevated temperature of the heating coil during vaping could enhance thermaldegradation of VEA, causing a shift in emission product distribution and toxicity in vapers. VEA vaping emissions were produced at coil temperatures ranging between 176 to 356˚C using a variable voltage vape pen and analyzed using GC/MS with electron ionization to assess how emission product identity and concentration changes as a function of temperature. In addition, pure pyrolysis of VEA without the influence of the device was also investigated using a tube furnace to investigate potential catalysis by the device itself.

The results from this study contribute to our current understanding of the toxicity mechanisms underlying VEA vaping emissions and have significant implications for the potential health risks associated with the use of other e-liquids.A pen-style e-cigarette battery was used as a model variable voltage e-cigarette for this study. This vape pen has set nominal voltages of 3.3, 3.8, 4.3, and 4.8 V. These voltages were confirmed using a multi-meter to measure the actual voltage of the battery upon activation. The set-up of the temperature measurements can be seen in S1 Fig in S1 File. The protocol for the thermocouple measurement of the e-cigarette coil and oil temperatures was adapted from Chen et al. To measure the temperature at each voltage setting, the pen was connected to a fresh cartridge that was filled with VEA standard oil until the oil level sat just above the atomizer base. The oil level in the cartridge was kept consistent between each reading, as the amount of oil in the cartridge has been previously shown to affect the temperatures the coil may reach. Three 1 mm grounded k-type thermocouple wires were connected to a 4-channel data logger . One thermocouple was kept suspended to measure the temperature of ambient air as a device control. The second thermocouple was inserted into the air flow tube of the cartridge and allowed to rest on the surface of the ceramic coil. This position was chosen to record temperature across all voltage settings as it not only provided the most consistent measurements, but certain positioning of the probe resulted in the battery shutting off, likely to prevent overheating or burning in the event of the air flow tube being blocked during real-use scenarios. The third thermocouple was inserted into the glass casing of the cartridge to submerge the end of the probe in VEA oil in contact with the atomizer. The thermocouples allowed for simultaneous measurement of the coil and the parent oil in the cartridge when the battery was activated. Temperatures were recorded by the data logger every 1 s over a 1 min cycle. The vape pen was activated by holding the power button for 4 s to heat the coil, then allowed to rest for the remainder of the cycle. A total of 13 cycles–including 3 initial preconditioning cycles–were measured.The procedure for collection of VEA vaping emissions at each temperature setting was adapted from previous studies. Prior to each collection, a fresh cartridge was filled with VEAstandard oil, weighed, and preconditioned by taking 3–5 puffs. The vaping emissions were collected using a cold trap apparatus maintained at -40˚C . The particle collection efficiency of the cold trap system at the flow rate used in this study has been reported previously. To collect aerosol emissions, one 4 s puff was taken at intervals of 1 min to maintain consistency with the temperature measurement procedure. Puffs were generated at each temperature using a 0.4 L min-1 air flow rate, which was controlled by a 0.46 L min-1 critical orifice connected a diaphragm pump .