“It’s like some… like a wooden cigarette that gives you flavours, but it’s not even a cigarette, you don’t even light it.”
In June of 2021, Joe Rogan was discussing habits with researcher David Sinclair, halfway through a three-hour episode, when he remembered a strange product he had seen sponsoring a few podcasts. A few minutes later, his producer Jamie put it up on the big screen. “Yeah, that’s it,” Rogan said. “It’s called a Füm.”
The CEO of the Canadian company, Braeden Pauls, took to LinkedIn to express his joy at receiving an “organic mention by a key cultural figure with millions of listeners.” His company had spent tens of thousands of dollars sponsoring podcasts that year. Some of these podcasts had caught Rogan’s eye, and now the company had just received a massive boost in publicity. This was followed by a 20 to 30% increase in sales over four weeks. So what exactly is this popular “cigarette?”
Füm is a passive device with a wooden handle and a steel mouthpiece, looking like a vaping pen, and while its maker can’t say that it will help you quit smoking, it is clearly hinting at it.
“Everything good without anything bad,” goes the tagline. But is Füm safe?
Risks, both established and theoretical
Pauls was in college, studying to become a psychologist, when he met his future company’s co-founders. They all wanted to help people quit smoking, and while vaping was being promoted as a step toward smoking cessation, many people were getting hooked on vaping and were trading one nicotine-delivery device for another.
Hence the development of Füm. There is no heating element, so no combustion or vaporization. There is no nicotine. Instead, the reusable pen contains a disposable core, a cylinder made of medical-grade polyester (not cotton, as many commenters online have suggested, which can flake off and be breathed in). These cores are infused with therapeutic-grade essential oils. These oils, extracted from plants, are made up of fragrant molecules that evaporate easily and can linger in the air, and a large number of unsupported health claims has been made about them in wellness communities.
You put the Füm device in your mouth, as you would a cigarette, take a drag from it and smell the essential oils, before exhaling the air through your nose. The cores are said to last two to three days and come infused with a variety of essential oils.
The gadget is meant to fulfill three needs smokers have when they try to kick the habit. First, the need to put something in their mouth, what is referred to as “hand-to-mouth fixation.” Second, the need to distract them from craving cigarettes, which Füm says it fulfills by delivering a bit of orange vanilla or crisp mint in every drag. Third, a way to calm the stress that comes with being deprived of nicotine, by allowing the user to fidget with the pen, twist the barrel around, and snap the mouthpiece on and off.
While the company is not claiming it is an effective tool to stop smoking, they are declaring their device to be safe. “Everything good without anything bad.” “No toxins, vapor, smoke, or batteries!” “We will always go above and beyond with safety.”
But is breathing in essential oils every day a good idea?
The company’s website says it is currently funding two studies being conducted by independent parties, and it lists a single completed study that was done on their behalf by NSF, a major organization involved in laboratory testing and certification. What NSF did was to weigh these essential-oil-infused cores after simulating use, by replacing the aspiration made by the mouth with a pipette. As the essential oils are drawn in, the core loses some of its weight, and this can be used to figure out how much essential oil is being delivered to the user. NSF estimated that each time someone draws air in from the Füm device, they get less than 1 microlitre of an essential oil in their mouth. For comparison, an average drop of water has a volume of 50 microlitres, so we are talking about one fiftieth of a drop of water… per use.
Ten drags off of it would result in 10 microlitres of essential oils, which we can multiply by the number of cigarettes a user would have otherwise smoked daily to know what volume of essential oils is delivered to the body in this way in a single day (if the Füm becomes a one-to-one replacement). This calculation may appear unnecessary: after all, aren’t essential oils natural and benign? Why should we care how much essential oil someone is breathing in daily from a small contraption?
The thing is, essential oils are not necessarily harmless. Some cause allergic reactions upon contact with the skin. Eucalyptus essential oil, sometimes marketed to treat flu-like symptoms, is toxic to the nervous system, and accidentally ingesting small amounts can cause headaches, vomiting, even a coma. Sucking on toothpicks dipped in cinnamon essential oil can cause burning lesions in the mouth. As for essential oil diffusers and nebulizers, which release these fragrant molecules into our air, they come with a theoretical risk: lipoid pneumonia, where molecules of fat enter the lower respiratory tract and cause fever, cough, and difficulty breathing.
This is already seen with mineral oil and petroleum jelly applied in the nose, and this is why doctors often advise against applying Vicks VapoRub to the nostrils. A couple of pharmacy researchers raised the alarm a few years ago in the medical literature around essential oils and their potential for causing lipoid pneumonia as well.
Around the same time, a research team in Toronto actually measured the particles coming off of an ultrasonic essential oil diffuser and concluded that the device was emitting large quantities of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, especially when the oils were diluted in tap water instead of distilled water. They wrote that “despite their widespread use, almost no research has been conducted on the impact of ultrasonic essential oil diffusers on indoor air.” Obviously, these gadgets will add particles to the air: that is how they diffuse smell, after all. But the health impact of these particles being breathed in every day has not been studied, and the fact that they are natural has no bearing on their safety inside the body at these concentrations. The American Lung Association earlier this year even warned people that breathing in essential oils may not be as safe as once thought, especially for individuals with respiratory conditions.
Quitting smoking is hard
I want to make it abundantly clear that I’m not trying to fearmonger or to argue for a ban on devices that deliver essential oils to our noses. Peeling an orange releases the fruit’s oils, and it is a pleasant experience that does not harm us. I merely want to question the assumption that we are all making—including the makers of Füm—that breathing in essential oils day in, day out, especially from a pen that delivers these molecules inside our mouth, is necessarily safe. Even if little of it ends up in the lungs because users are told to keep the air in their mouth before exhaling through the nose (which reminded me of Bill Clinton admitting he had smoked marijuana but “didn’t inhale”), these molecules are still being delivered in the nose and mouth. The open question is whether the amount is enough to cause trouble.
Paediatric psychologist Alayna Tackett and toxicology researcher Meghan Rebuli published an article in Toxicological Sciences two years ago asking if these “flavored inhalable products” like Füm and Monq (another portable essential oil diffuser that courts smokers by claiming “0 nicotine” and “0 tobacco”) are a new respiratory hazard. Their safety has not been evaluated, and studies suggest that some flavouring compounds like mint, cinnamon and eucalyptus can contribute to toxicity of the airways. Essential oils that are diffused in a room also release chemicals that are known to cause problems, like toluene and benzene, and some of the natural compounds found in these oils will react with indoor oxidants like ozone and hydroxyl ions to produce new compounds, which carry their own risk. And because essential oils can lead to allergic reactions on the skin, they have the potential to do so around the mouth when being drawn in from a portable device.
Füm is not necessarily unsafe, but to claim that it comes “without anything bad” strikes me as irresponsible. We simply do not know. As for its effectiveness in quitting smoking, that has also not been tested directly, although two very small studies have looked at the impact of inhaled essential oils on nicotine craving. Their significant limitations make it impossible to conclude anything.
Smoking cessation is really hard. People who are ready to quit have access to a number of tools: counselling, nicotine replacement therapy in the form of patches, gums, lozenges and nasal sprays, as well as drugs like cytisine and varenicline. (Even vaping, although its long-term safety is not yet known.) None of these approaches works very well (though they are better than placebo or no intervention), and most smokers will attempt to quit multiple times before finally succeeding. It turns out that letting go of a product designed to be highly addictive is really difficult.
The idea behind Füm is a good one: dramatically reduce the risk while still providing some of the elements of the behaviour the person wants to give up. Its effectiveness is completely unknown, however, and the risk, despite the marketing, is not zero.
As aromatherapy is a darling of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry, we need clearer data on the risks associated with our use of essential oils, especially if we’re going to be bringing them right up to our mouth and inhaling them every day.
Take-home message:
- Füm is a passive device with no nicotine or heating element, where the user breathes in essential oils, and it is meant to help people quit smoking
- No studies have been published on its effectiveness in helping to quit smoking
- While marketing material claims Füm is safe, a number of (real and theoretical) risks exist, from allergic reactions to airway toxicity, and no study has been published on Füm’s safety in humans
