This type of logic is highly problematic. Perhaps free radicals are significantly more damaging if taken in conjunction with another substance which is present in e-cig vapour and not present in cigarette smoke. Perhaps free radicals do damage at a relatively low thresh hold, and any higher concentration does not increase damage significantly, and perhaps e-cig vapour contains this harmful thresh hold. I am not saying these explanations are likely, the latter one may well currently be known to be false, the point is simply that I could think of countless scenarios where one hundredth of the concentration of a harmful substance does not necessarily correspond to one hundredth of the risk, there could be many reasons the risk remains substantial.
It doesn't make any kind of sense to just go ahead and assume that none of these (or similar) variables are at play. These are empirical questions and it is extremely misguided to assume you can guess the answers to them. It is potentially dangerous to downplay the potential harms of something by using the kind of invalid logic which you are employing here.
I don't want to sound like I'm using the appeal to authority fallacy, but do you know what you're talking about here? As far as I know the damage mechanisms of free radicals and other ROS are pretty clear and are not all that complicated. So predictions of potential damage from the concentrations/amounts of the latter can be made with some degree of certainty (but of course need to be validated by experiment). I'm not just spewing unbased bullshit in this one, I believe. Here are some aspects that need to be considered when thinking about this issue:
1) We do have quite a long history of people smoking tobacco with varying frequency and heaviness of abuse. It's not really something new. What, really simplistic, conclusions can you draw from this history? That smoking is damaging to the whole body. But significant deterioration is seen mainly only following long-term, and often heavy, use.
2) Both cigs and e-cigs share a common factor - tobacco; they're not completely unrelated. As such, the assumption that they share many of their traits is, again, not completely unrealistic and unbased. So when predicting something based on history of the other we're not completely going into unknown territory, but can assume some things with a good degree of certainty. The main hazards of tobacco smoke are all kinds of reactive compounds resulting from incomplete combustion of plant matter (polyaromatics, heterocycles, nitrosamines etc) and free radicals (I use free radicals and reactive oxygen species, ROS, interchangeably here). So, effectively, this article states that e-cig vapor doesn't contain many of the former. Of course without *cough cough* reading the original study it is hard to say what exactly they mean here; but let's take it word for word. And the ROS content is 100-1000 fold lower. As such, it is not completely illogical to assume a significantly decreased risk, even going as low as making you wonder whether it's significant at all considering the relative safety of cigarettes.
So, coupled with the fact that I said that of course the speculations are only true if they're approved by rigorous experiments, I really don't see what you don't like about this. I'm not denying the potential danger, I'm just questioning the thought that "e-cigs produce ROS, THUS they're harmful" when in reality ROS are produced all the time and really the amount matters, not whether they're produced or not. I'm not downplaying the potential danger, not at all. Just trying to put it into perspective. With the "zero tolerance" logic you may as well advice people against going outside, because they may breathe in polluted air or the like. Let's not go into being ridiculous. The whole "but what if" argument is not pertinent here when the possibility is quite small. What if I get hit by a car tomorrow?
I am a little confused by this comment. Your initial grievance was that the article did not make it clear enough that the evidence suggests the potential harm caused by the presence of free radicals and formaldehyde in e-cig vapour is small. Yet here you seem to be acknowledging that the article does make it clear that the evidence suggests potential for harm from e-cig vapour is small.
If you read that part of the article again you will see the word "but" and "still" there.
But the levels are still in the range of what might be seen in the air of a heavily air-polluted area.
That wording implies that the vapors are dangerous. When you compare on a realistic level though, millions of people live in polluted cities. And they may suffer health consequences. But they breathe that air in almost all the time, every day. E-cig smokers aren't sucking on the pipe 24/7. Just that should already trigger the thought that maybe they're over-exaggerating the problem. Indeed, if you look into the data then the article does suggest that e-cigs are not all that harmful, but the primary wording suggests otherwise at times.
As far as my personal experience goes with laymen, saying that "e-cigs produce ROS content akin to that of heavily polluted air" will in their mind equal to "e-cigs are bad, because they produce so much ROS". But at this point, honestly, I'm splitting hairs. There is no need for this.
With respect I don't think you should be classing yourself as external from the people who don't analyse information properly, at least not in this case. It is unfortunate that a great deal of people are not particularly scientifically literate, but my point is that this particular article has reported the findings in a very clear, and what seems like a very balanced (I would have to see the actual study to know for sure) manner. In scenarios like this, surely the fault of any misunderstanding should be placed on the uneducated reader. There is no point castigating an author who wrote a clear and accurate article for the fact that some of his readers are stupid.
It's not really the author's fault, although they could have written the article better; it is, like you said, the responsibility of the reader to interpret the information properly. As far as news articles go, it is not poorly written, after all.
Mind telling me why I didn't analyze the information properly? I used my theoretical and practical knowledge in chemistry and theoretical knowledge in biochemistry to analyze the effects of ROS in this aspect; coupled with, as far as I see, sound logic. I acknowledge that my conclusions are speculative and need empirical proof; I'm basically requiring a follow-up from the study (which we never got to read) before making any definite conclusions and oppose the writing of an article on unfinished work, which may be interpreted incorrectly.