The recent outbreak of lung injuries linked to vaping highlight the dangers of e-cigarettes. Often vaping is promoted as a healthier alternative to smoking. But it increases the chances of developing chronic pulmonary diseases like emphysema, asthma and bronchitis by 30%, according to a recent study.

Infact people smoking both conventional and electronic cigarettes - the majority of vapers 18 and older face triple the risk of having respiratory illnesses.

These conclusions come from a study conducted about the long-term health impacts of vaping on a representative adult population. This study was conducted by the University of California-San Francisco, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The analysis tracked 32,000 U.S. adults not having any previous signs of lung disease from 2013-16. It found stronger evidence of the connection between vaping and respiratory ailments than previous studies that looked at a moment in time and couldn’t establish a causal link.

The lead author Stanton Glantz, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the school’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education said they concluded that e-cigarettes are harmful on their own, and the effects are independent of smoking conventional tobacco.

The most common are the dual users who are exposed to the combined risk of e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes, so they are worse off than tobacco smokers. This research found the rate of chronic pulmonary illnesses among current vapers is 1.3 times higher than for non-users, compared to 2.6 times higher for smokers and more than three times as high for those who do both.

Since less than 1% of smokers switch completely to vaping, though it might seem that e-cigarettes are safer, as Glantz said that in theory they are, but not so much in practice.

CDC reported, 2,409 EVALI cases that required hospitalization and 52 fatalities as of December 10. The findings represent another blow to the e-cigarette industry that came under scrutiny with the sudden spike in EVALI, a newly coined acronym for e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury.