“Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!”

“When as a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Yep, if you’d asked me back then who was my favourite character it would have been the robot but I’m not a kid anymore. Now if I look at the robot I can fully appreciate Zachary Smith’s take on him – he was an annoying, interfering, meddlesome idiot. Constantly harping with warnings of impending danger he was nothing more than a jumped up Health & Safety officer in a silver suit.

As for Will, if he were in my school class I’d bully him mercilessly for being the squeaky clean git he is. And I say this as a teacher.

Warnings about dangers are all fair and well if they are delivered in context and measured. In response to the letter to the World Health Organisation the vaping world’s Zachary Smith (played by Professor Glantz) took up a pen to respond.

Unfortunately for us all Glantz is neither camp, entertaining, worth watching or constantly up to mischief. Oh, hang on a second, I take that last bit back because if there’s one thing Prof Glantz is always up to it’s mischief – just the incredibly dull and stupid kind. Dull and stupid like the kid in our village who waits for half an hour for a car to appear before walking across the road i.n.c.r.e.d.i.b.l.y.s.l.o.w.l.y.

In his letter (where he managed to find over a hundred people who should be educated enough to know better to co-sign) he made a succession of unsubstantiated claims.

E-cigs are dangerous because they rope young people into smoking and vaping. Unfortunately what Stan was unaware of (or chose to ignore) were that the research he cited proves exactly the opposite. It demonstrates the number of teen smokers in the US has fallen alongside a minimal increase in vaping that suggests either kids gave up without vaping or used vaping to quit. Stupid Stan.

Electronic cigarettes are dangerous because they contain heavy metals. I think the big mistake he makes here is to confuse the term heavy metals with Heavy Metal. Obviously no sane parent would want their child doing cocaine with Lemmy or having lessons in how to kill bats in the land of Oz.

He was trying to say that they contain heavy metals that are dangerous to health but, erm, so is the air we breathe and the water we drink. He wants us to think they are as injurious to our wellbeing as becoming a drummer with Spinal Tap.

Unfortunately for Zachary Glantz he forgot to check up on what the actual readings are and how they compare to the legislation on safe levels. Tested levels have shown the presence of nickel and lead in vape is in the order of 6x less while chromium is over 70 times less the agreed daily safe dosage limit. I could go on but that would get as dull as reading one of his press releases.

While working with a chemical company we did a project with NASA to create a micrometeorite detector. I’m pretty au fait with the concept of micro particles as a result so when he warns the World Health Organisation that vape contains them I come over all face palms. It’s not the size of the meteorite that kills you in space; it’s the speed it hits you at. It’s not the cloud of microparticles that kills you; it’s what the cloud is made up from. In the case of vape we know it’s not got the 2,000+ carcinogens and toxins that smoke has.

I really wish Professor Glantz could get lost in space instead of trying to use the space between his ears.