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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

Since prions can be inhaled via aerosoles[1], I often wonder how long it will be until vaping causes prion diseases to rapidly spread. Or new prions to be introduced.

[1]: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

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What on earth does vaping specifically have to do with the aerosol transmission of prions? Unless there are misfolded proteins in the liquid, but that's just as likely as them being in your beef, the air around you, someone chopping meat or anything else.

Your vaping reference seems odd.

If (and it's a big if) they were in the liquid, someone walking down the street and hitting their vape could "infect" quite a lot of people. The delay between that point and the onset of symptoms would make it very hard to pinpoint the vape as the cause.

It's just interesting to think about.

> It's just interesting to think about.

Is it? Your line of thinking is really confusing to me. The likelihood of this happening by accident is effectively 0%. Even if it was intentional, this makes even less sense. Because then the person would not only have to find some prions to put in their vape, they would also have to inhale it themselves to then blow it into other people's faces?

I just really don't understand where you're coming from or why you would say any of this.

Eh? Loads of bad stuff can be inhaled via aerosols so idk why you're mentioning prion diseases specifically. I mean not that long ago there was a lot of 'off the market' e-liquids that would cause popcorn lung.

Lots of aerosol "air fresheners" out there in operation too, that use petroleum gas as carriers. It's just accepted that it's fine to inhale petroleum gas.

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