Vanillin
Food-approved — but as aerosol, irritant pyrolysis products form.
⚠ Sounds harmless — it isn't
Vanillin ist als Lebensmittelaroma harmlos — beim Verdampfen entstehen jedoch aldehydische Pyrolyseprodukte, die Atemwegszellen reizen. Mengen in Liquids weit über Lebensmittel-Konzentrationen.
At a glance
- Also known as
- 4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyd · Künstliche Vanille
- CAS number
- 121-33-5
- Toxicity
Low
- Carcinogenic
- Not classified for cancer
- In cigarette smoke
- In vape aerosol
- in praktisch allen Dessert-, Custard- und Bäckerei-Aromen enthalten
What is Vanillin?
Vanillin is the main flavour compound of vanilla — chemically a simple phenolic aldehyde. Naturally it occurs in vanilla pods; industrially it's synthesised from lignin or guaiacol. Approved for decades in food and pharma as a flavouring, vanillin is less well studied for inhalation.
Why is Vanillin in cigarettes?
Vanillin is a component of practically all dessert, custard, bakery and caramel flavours in e-liquids. Because the sweet taste carries appealingly in aerosolised form, vanillin and ethyl vanillin are used in significantly higher concentrations than in food — sometimes in the single-digit percent range of liquid mass.
What Vanillin does to your body — short term
Vanillin itself barely irritates the airways at customary concentrations. Bahl et al. (2012) showed that vanillin-containing e-liquids were more toxic in reproductive toxicity tests on stem cells than the pure carriers PG and VG. The effect rises with liquid concentration.
What Vanillin does long term
During vaporisation, vanillin pyrolyses to aldehyde follow-up products — including trace amounts of formaldehyde and methylglyoxal. These secondary substances are the actual long-term risk, not vanillin itself. Clapp et al. (2017) detected measurable bronchial epithelial function impairment in vanilla-liquid aerosols.
Where else do you know Vanillin from?
You know vanillin as the vanilla flavour in ice cream, chocolate, baked goods, pharmaceuticals (cough-syrup sweetening) and perfumery. Natural vanilla contains vanillin at about 1-2 percent of pod mass; synthetic food flavouring uses similar or lower concentrations — vape liquids significantly higher.
How it compares
There's no separate workplace exposure limit for vanillin in air, because historically the substance was a food flavouring. When inhaled from vape aerosols, exposure per puff is typically in the microgram range — the pyrolysis follow-up products are the actual risk to assess.
Workplace exposure limit: kein eigener Grenzwert (Lebensmittelaroma)
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