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Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast.

With the programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life and in nicotine,

I'm Charlotte MacDonald.

According to the World Health Organisation, smoking kills some 7 million people every year.

It's one of the world's leading causes of preventable death.

Because smoking causes lung cancer and other awful health conditions,

many smokers switch to vaping, using nicotine-based e-cigarettes.

But the World Health Organisation is also concerned about vaping.

Last year, they said 100 million people around the world are now using e-cigarettes,

including millions of children, and warned that they were fueling a new wave of nicotine addiction.

But how do the health risks of these two means of getting nicotine into your bloodstream compare? According to a recent article in the

Daily Mail, they're basically the same. Here's the headline. Vaping is linked to lung and mouth

cancer in major study, as experts warn it is not safer than smoking.

But is that true? Is vaping just as bad for you as smoking?

Tom Coles has been taking a look at this. Hi Tom. Hello, Charlotte. So, we know

or more or less that smoking is one of the clearest examples of something that is unambiguously bad for you. We know that it causes cancer, heart disease, strokes, you name it.

Right. And we know why that is, because you're setting chemically treated tobacco on fire

and inhaling the smoke, coating your lungs with toxic tar in the process. At the same time, we also know

that vaping does not involve those things. E-cigarettes work by heating a liquid containing nicotine

and flavourings with an electric coil to produce an aerosol or mist that you inhale. Before filling

the street with a sickly sweet smell. Indeed. Here's Professor Leon Shahab, co-director of the UCL

...