Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
When e-cigarettes are labeled as 'GRAS' (which means 'generally recognized as safe'), it tricks people—especially teens—into thinking they’re harmless to breathe, even though no real science or official rules back up that idea.
Causal
Even before you vape them, the chemicals in e-liquids can mix together and turn into new, harmful substances that weren’t listed on the label.
Mechanistic
Even though vitamin E acetate is considered safe to eat, when people breathed it in through vaping, it caused serious lung damage during the 2019–2020 outbreak — so being labeled 'safe for food' doesn’t mean it’s safe to inhale.
When people vape liquids containing propylene glycol or glycerol, the heat turns them into harmful chemicals like formaldehyde and acrolein, which can irritate the lungs, damage blood vessels, and mess with the body’s internal clock.
Flavors used in e-cigarettes that are safe to eat can still hurt your lungs when you breathe them in, causing irritation, cell damage, and swelling.
Just because a food ingredient is considered safe to eat doesn’t mean it’s safe to breathe in, especially when it’s heated up in a vape pen — the safety rules for eating and breathing are totally different.
Descriptive
When baby cows are fed different kinds of fat in their milk substitute, their blood fats change in noticeable ways—like having more or less of certain types of fats in their bloodstream.
When baby cows are fed a special milk substitute made with animal fats instead of plant fats, their blood shows less of certain fat-related molecules, which might mean their bodies are processing fats differently.
When baby cows are fed milk substitute with animal fat instead of plant fat, their blood shows different types of fats—some important ones are lower—which might mean their bodies are processing fats and building cell membranes differently.
Correlational
Scientists found that a special kind of cobalt-based powder can help turn gas into liquid fuel on its own, or it can be mixed with other catalysts to make them work better.
The oily stuff made by a special cobalt catalyst in a chemical process isn't ready to use as gas or diesel yet—it needs to be cleaned up or tweaked first.
When making fuel from gas using a special cobalt catalyst, it only makes carbon dioxide as a side effect if it gets really hot—above 280°C—because at that temperature, a different chemical reaction starts kicking in.
When scientists use a special cobalt sponge-like material to turn gases into fuel under lab conditions, most of the resulting gas is plain, straight-chain hydrocarbons, and the biggest part of that is methane — the same gas in your kitchen stove.
Scientists used a special kind of cobalt-based sponge-like material to turn gas into liquid fuels like those in gasoline, and it made mostly three types of hydrocarbons: straight-chain molecules, ring-shaped ones, and benzene-like ones.
In this experiment, scientists made some oily substances that include simple carbon chains and others with oxygen in them—like alcohols and acids—showing they created a messy mix of organic chemicals without using living things.
Under hot, watery conditions similar to those deep under the ocean, certain chemical reactions can make oily molecules similar to those found in living things — from very small ones to really big ones, including both plain oils and oils with oxygen in them.
Scientists used carbon atoms with a special tag to track where the fats in their experiment came from — and they found the fats came from the tagged chemicals they added, not from dirt or other random stuff.
If you heat up two simple acids—formic acid and oxalic acid—in a hot, pressurized water environment, they both make the same kind of fatty molecules, so either one could work as a starting material to make these lipids.
If you heat up formic acid or oxalic acid in a metal container at a high temperature for a couple of days, it can turn into a bunch of oily, waxy, or fatty substances similar to those found in living things.
A chemical called Tyloxapol, used in a lung treatment fluid, may help calm down the immune cells in the lungs when they’re triggered by germs, without killing those cells.
When people started replacing butter and lard with processed oils and fats, it took a long time for scientists to notice that this change was making people more inflamed and sick with long-term diseases.
Scientists can make synthetic fats in a factory that mimic the exact structure of natural fats like butter, lard, and coconut oil, and they can make them in big enough amounts to be useful.
Some restaurants and food companies are using man-made fats made in factories instead of real animal fats like butter or lard, and they’re not telling customers — so you might be eating them without knowing.
This is a factory process that turns gas into stuff like diesel or wax — it was made to make fuel for machines, not food for people.