Mum of teen who died after lungs collapsed issues warning against vaping
A mum who believes she lost her 18-year-old daughter to vaping has warned young people to not pick up the dangerous habit.
Worrying stats suggest that the number of young people in hospital due to vaping factors is rising, according to figures obtained by Sky News.
NHS figures show that 40 people under 20 were admitted to hospitals in England last year due to 'vaping-related disorders'.
Advert
Rachel Howe, from Wirral, is convinced that vaping killed her daughter, Rosey Christoffersen, back in February 2015.
"She was supposed to call me at 5.30pm but she didn't call," the mum told Sky News.
"I rang her phone and one of the ambulance crew answered and said we're with your daughter, we're working on her. She'd come out of work and collapsed."
The 18-year-old - who was vaping heavily for six months prior to her death - had a heart attack after the sudden collapse of both her lungs.
Rachel said she was told that her daughter's lungs were 'just a mass of holes and blisters called blebs'.
"To be honest, there was just a lot of stunned silence at the hospital," she added.
In the months prior to her death, Rosey had visited the doctors multiple times to report chest pain.
However, the active footballer was told that she had just pulled her muscle.
I was finding bottles and bottles of the empty liquid," said Rachel.
"She constantly had it in her mouth. And I kept saying to her, you know, you wouldn't smoke that much... why are you vaping that much?"
Although there has been no official link between vaping and Rosey's death, the mum claims that doctors told her that it 'probably' was to blame.
"She started vaping in the August, and she was dead in the February," Rachel said.
This comes after headteacher Tony McCabe of St Joseph's High School in Horwich, Bolton was forced to install vape sensors in the school toilets.
"On the very first day, they went off 112 times," he said.
"In a school of 1,000 pupils, some were as young as 11, who got caught.
"Some of our young people are so addicted to vapes that they can't last a lesson - so an hour of time - without the need to pop out and use a vape," said Mr McCabe.
"I see young people as victims of the vape crisis because I think families and society has sleepwalked into this new habit without realising the impact."
Anish Vij