Concern grows over viral video of mouth-tested disposable vapes
Viral footage revealed that disposable vaporizers are not only assembled by hand but also tested with the mouth. Commenters are concerned about both the factory worker's health and the hygiene of this process.
5:08 PM EDT, August 19, 2024
Social media circulated a short video showing a young man in protective clothing raising a box of disposable vapes to his mouth and lighting each one with his breath. The person who posted the video on platform X commented: "A person tests each vaporizer? That's incredible. My brother is in a trance; he said he can test 10,000 vapes a day, lol."
Is every disposable vaporizer tested with the mouth?
The viral clip comes from a longer video on the "Machina" channel on YouTube. Its creators show how factories in China operate. In the episode: "Do they really test every vape with their mouths?" they visited a disposable vape manufacturer in Baoan city in Shenzhen province. In this region of China, 80 percent of the world's disposable vaporizers are produced.
Both on YouTube and platform X, two main threads appear in the comments. First, there is concern for the worker's health, as the worker confirmed in the video that on more intense days, he tests over 10,000 disposable vapes. Moreover, he also confirmed that he smokes after hours. Commenters wrote: "Speedrunning lung cancer" or more empathetically: "This kid breaks my heart."
Is testing vapes with the mouth hygienic?
Many people also wondered about the hygiene involved in such a process. As the creator of the video on YouTube explained, vapes come in so many different "flavors," sizes, and shapes depending on the brand that it is not profitable for factories to build automated production lines. Therefore, the vast majority of tasks in the production of disposables are performed by people. This includes testing the flavor and the pressure mechanism that activates the device when taking a puff.
The fact that vapes are "tested with the mouth" sparked a wave of comments such as: "So we're all vaping his leftovers? How does that work, lol?" or "Are you telling me I've practically kissed this guy while vaping my grape-cranberry disposables?" The video creator finally assured us that sterilization is the last process before packaging the finished products. Interestingly, this stage was not shown in the footage.
