A 17-year-old girl in the UK was hospitalized after a hole burst in her lung due to vaping the equivalent of 400 cigarettes weekly. According to Metro, the incident occurred on May 11 when the teen, Kyla Blythe, collapsed and turned ‘blue’ during a sleepover at a friend’s house.
Her lung collapsed due to excessive vaping, which burst a small air blister called a pulmonary bleb on her lungs. Blythe then underwent a five-and-a-half-hour surgery to remove part of her lung.
Her father, Mark Blythe, said, “It was terrifying. 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.”
Blythe began vaping at the age of 15
Notably, Blythe began vaping at the age of 15 after seeing her peers do it. Believing it to be harmless, she had been inhaling an entire 4,000-puff vape each week. However, the recent 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 rapidly 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 ending up in the hospital with collapsed lungs.
Apart from lung damage, vaping could stunt brain growth in teenagers due to toxic chemicals like lead and uranium found inside them.