The propylene glycol in e-smoking liquids might help keep us healthy. It would accomplish that by its germicidal action. It kills many of the major bacteria that threaten lung entry into our bodies.
Back in the late '30s, researchers at the University of Chicago stumbled onto its effectiveness as a germ-killer, as related in this Time magazine story from Nov. 16, 1942:
"A powerful preventive against pneumonia, influenza and other respiratory diseases may be promised by a brilliant series of experiments conducted during the last three years at the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital. Dr. Oswald Hope Robertson last week was making final tests with a new germicidal vapor ? propylene glycol ? to sterilize air. If the results so far obtained are confirmed, one of the age-old searches of man will finally achieve its goal...
"...the researchers found that the propylene glycol itself was a potent germicide. One part of glycol in 2,000,000 parts of air would ? within a few seconds ? kill concentrations of air-suspended pneumococci, streptococci and other bacteria numbering millions to the cubic foot.
"How did it work? Respiratory disease bacteria float about in tiny droplets of water breathed, sneezed and coughed from human beings. The germicidal glycol also floats in infinitesimally small particles. Calculations showed that if droplet had to hit droplet, it would take two to 200 hours for sterilization of sprayed air to take place. Since sterilization took place in seconds, Dr. Robertson concluded that the glycol droplets must give off gas molecules which dissolve in the water droplets and kill the germs within them.
"Dr. Robertson placed groups of mice in a chamber and sprayed its air first with propylene glycol, then with influenza virus. All the mice lived. Then he sprayed the chamber with virus alone. All the mice died."
Source:
http://www.esmoke.tk
