• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Smoking In The Studio, Again!

boiseengineer

boiseengineer

Since we (thankfully) banned smoking from studios many years ago, any thoughts on doing the same for E-cigarettes?

"It's just water vapor."

Or is it?

Meridian Idaho just banned e-cigarettes from all public areas and businesses.
 
boiseengineer said:
Since we (thankfully) banned smoking from studios many years ago, any thoughts on doing the same for E-cigarettes?

"It's just water vapor."

Or is it?

Meridian Idaho just banned e-cigarettes from all public areas and businesses.
Click to expand...

While they're at it, they should ban using toothpicks in public areas. And blowing noses. Philosophically, I think businesses should be able to make their own rules.
 
Too late I tried to remove the Meridian reference.
Like to stick to the question and re-phrase it "do e-cigarettes deposite gunk on and in equipment that will cause problems like the coffin nails did?
 
I have one jock that dose this and so far i have not seen any problems, But its only been about 6 months.
I would be very interested in others experience on the subject.
 
The "water vapor" that e-cigs give off also contains nicotine and other chemicals. Whether it is enough to cause over time the same brown, sticky, smelly deposits that regular cigarette smoke leaves on things, I don't know.
 
Is the jock an infant? Can he stop "sucking on his bottle" for a few hours??

Seriously, why take the chance. Tell him to get the hell outside just like all the other smokers that somehow get their "smoke breaks" when the rest of us who don't pollute our lungs have to continue working.

Bitter? Yep. I remember cleaning tar off contacts, relays getting ruined by it, cart deck heads, reel to reel heads and even the VHS heads on the deck we used for archiving getting gunked up by someone's bad habit.

And even if it's "water vapor", as the previous poster said, it contains plenty of the same harsh chemicals that cigarette smoke has in it.

Here's my philosophy: Substitute "farting" for "smoking/e-cigarettes" whenever you analyze it. Would you want someone breaking wind constantly where you work, eat, drink or any other activity? Sure we all pass gas, but there's a proper place for it. Same goes for a restaurant/studio/workplace or anywhere else it can affect others that aren't participating in it.
 
rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

Next we'll have little jack-booted brown shirt smoker haters that double tap you with a Luger while you're sitting at the board.
Seriously, ban it or tolerate it, but don't keep strangling the baby over and over and then resuscitate it just to slap it around some more.

I put in ventilation, which too few studios have, stepped up the PMs and forgot about it. they'll smoke whether you like it or not learn to live with it and concentrate on operations.
 
kevtronics said:
The "water vapor" that e-cigs give off also contains nicotine and other chemicals. Whether it is enough to cause over time the same brown, sticky, smelly deposits that regular cigarette smoke leaves on things, I don't know.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. From what I've read, the levels of nicotine in an e-cig are around 2% of the levels in the real deal. That would put them below the levels found in prescription nicotine inhalers. The hand full of other chemicals are mostly flavoring agents and are also in pretty low concentrations, but they are not zero, of course. Could they represent a long term danger to equipment? Unknown. It may take years or decades to determine that, however, it seems likely that any risk is pretty small. One thing not in e-cigs is the tar which is what makes ordinary cigarette smoke sticky and brown. I suspect that the tar is responsible for a lot of the damage that smoke causes.

When someone smokes a real cigarette outside, the smoke gets into their clothes and then on to the items in the control room when they come back from breaks, but "smoking" an e-cig in the studio appears to leave no trace. Personally, I'd prefer to encourage my people to use e-cigs, so forcing them outside with the regular smokers is one reason not to use the e-cigs.
 
Propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin vapors are ~safe for humans and animals. The only danger to a studio really is that it build up on optical drives. Propylene glycol is the main ingredient in fog machines. If you've worked around those a lot, you remember changing/servicing your CD decks every couple years. An e-cig is a fraction of a fraction of the output of a fog machine while it's being exhaled. I figure it would take a whole lot longer to really do any damage to something as sensitive to surface particles as an optical drive.

Read some more if you want...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerin

As far as the flavoring and nicotine, of course there is some amount exhaled.
 
E Cigs are harmless to humans, the equipment, and the environment. Because it looks and acts like a cigarette, there are those who would ban them everywhere solely due to the fact that someone is enjoying themselves. We can't have THAT, now, can we? God Forbid!
 
Last edited:
frnkp2000 said:
E Cigs are harmless to humans, the equipment, and the environment. Because it looks and acts like a cigarette, there are those who would ban them everywhere solely due to the fact that someone is enjoying themselves. We can't have THAT, now, can we? God Forbid!
Click to expand...

Tell that to the lady that had one explode.
 
It was the lithium ion battery that exploded. They are dangerous in anything they are used in, if the device (or better yet, the device AND the battery) don't have a protection circuit built into them, against over-charging, over-discharging, shorting, temperature, etc.

I'm not a flashlight nut, but I have a few decent ones with the latest Cree technology, and the 4v cells I get all have protection circuits in the batteries.
 
From what I've seen of people smoking those things while driving, their car looks like a sauna. I can't figure out how they even see out the windows.
Do you really want the equivalent of a tea kettle under all your computers?
 
A thimble of water turned into vapor is not an issue.
It's like having more than 2 people in the room breathing.
We have nearly continuous air flow in the studios.
Now they have to fight for places to plug in chargers for phones and e-cigs..
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom