She started vaping at the age of 15
A 17-year-old girl in the UK was rushed to the hospital after a hole burst in her lung after she vaped the equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week. According to Metro, the incident happened on May 11 when the teen named Kyla Blythe collapsed and turned ‘blue’ during a sleepover at a friend’s house.
Her lung collapsed because excessive vaping had burst a small air blister known as a pulmonary bleb on her lungs. Ms Blythe then underwent a five-and-a-half-hour surgery to remove part of her lung.
Her father Mark Blythe said, ”It was terrifying for me. I’ve cried like a baby. It was horrible to watch. I’ve been with her the whole time. It was life-threatening. It did threaten her life because she was so close to having a cardiac arrest on that Friday. They said she went blue. They thought she’d gone.”
Notably, Ms Blythe started vaping at the age of 15 after seeing her peers do it. Believing it to be harmless, she has been inhaling an entire 4,000-puff vape each week. However, the latest ordeal has left her terrified.
”When I was 15 it started becoming a popular thing. All my friends were doing it. I just thought it would be harmless and that I would be fine. Every day I would use the 4,000-puff ones and I would go through them in about a week. I honestly thought they were harmless and wouldn’t do anything to anyone, even though I had seen so many things about them. I just feel like everyone has that same view.
But now I won’t touch them. I wouldn’t go near them. The situation has scared me out of them. I was terrified. We went in there thinking we were only going to be in there for a few hours but ended up being there for two weeks having surgeries and all this,” she said.
Her father has also warned other young people to ”throw away vapes because it’s not worth it”.
According to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the popularity of vapes is rising fast among children, with the number saying they’ve tried nearly doubling to 20% in 2023. In an alarming trend, children below 5 are also getting addicted to vaping and are ending up in the hospital because of collapsed lungs.
Apart from lung damage, vaping could stunt brain growth in teenagers due to toxic chemicals like lead and uranium found inside them.