E-cigarettes: Primary school age children are ending up in hospital due to excessive vaping
Boys and girls of primary school age are becoming so ill from vaping they are ending up in hospital, a Sky News investigation can reveal.
Figures from NHS England show there were 15 cases where children aged nine or under needed to be admitted in the year to April, up from 12 last year and two the year before that.
Professor Andy Bush, a paediatric chest physician at the Royal Brompton Hospital in west London, says he’s “absolutely horrified” by the statistics.
“Young children are being exposed to substances of addiction, substances that are toxic and some of the toxicity is not known,” he said.
“It’s a jungle… we just do not know what is in most of these things.
“If a teenager starts smoking cigarettes, probably the worst that’s going to happen to them is they’re going to be sick and throw up behind the bike shed.
“The acute use of e-cigarettes can put them in hospital, can put them in intensive care, things like lung bleeding, lung collapse and air leak, the lungs filling up with fat.”
For many smokers, vaping has been the key to quitting what is the biggest preventable cause of death.
Rosey Christoffersen died after both her lungs collapsed
But Rachel Howe is convinced it’s what killed her 18-year-old daughter, Rosey Christoffersen in February 2015, six months after she began vaping heavily.
“She was supposed to call me at 5.30pm but she didn’t call,” she said.
“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.”
Rosey had suffered a heart attack, but what had caused it was the sudden collapse of both her lungs – a bilateral pneumothorax.
Her brain was starved of oxygen and two days later it was made clear she would not survive.
Rachel Howe is convinced vaping killed her daughter
Rachel, from the Wirral, was told Rosey’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 said.
Rosey had been to the doctors a number of times with chest pain in the months before her death but as a fit and active footballer it was put down to a pulled 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?”
No post-mortem was carried out, no official link was made, but Rachel says doctors told her vaping was “probably” to blame.
Professor Andy Bush
Professor Bush goes further than that, adding he has never seen double lung collapse in a fit, young person.
“I think that mother is right,” he said.
“I cannot think of any other explanation that would cover the facts.”
It’s illegal to sell vapes to under-18s and the boxes are clearly labelled.
But it’s easy to see why certain products would appeal to children.
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They’re brightly coloured, flavoured like fruit or sweets, and at around £5 each for a disposable vape, cheap.
Some look like make-up, others like pens.
Rosey had been to the doctors a number of times with chest pain but as an active footballer it was put down to a pulled muscle
The government recently announced it would be clamping down on rogue firms unlawfully targeting teens with advertising on platforms like TikTok.
“Illicit vape enforcement squads” are also being set up at a cost of £3m to uncover the traders selling to young people.
In total, 40 young people aged up to 19 were admitted to hospital in the past year from vaping.
Read more:
Pupils from two schools in Hampshire left needing hospital treatment after vaping
Number of children trying vaping rises 50% in a year
Mint flavour makes vape liquid more toxic and damaging to lungs
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What are the dangers of vaping?
But John Dunne, from the UK Vaping Industry Association, says “the statistics would not exist if children were not getting their hands on vapes”.
“Every year according to the NHS some 76,000 people die from smoking, whereas there has not been one officially confirmed report of a death from vaping even though the category has been available in the UK for around the last 15 years,” he said.
“The fundamental issue that needs urgently addressing is the woeful level of enforcement of vaping age regulations across the UK.
“Whilst we see recent measures announced by the government as a step in the right direction to tackle youth vaping… much more needs to be done to support Trading Standards in their efforts to tackle rogue traders and cut off the source of supply of vapes to minors.”
He wants on-the-spot fines of £10,000 to be introduced for those caught selling to young people.
Rachel Howe and Rosey Christoffersen
Rosey was due to start a new job as a trainee hairdresser a couple of days after collapsing.
Instead that day she was being kept alive so her organs could be donated, helping eight other people.
Rachel wants more research to be done into the impact vaping has on young people.
She’s made it her mission to tell her daughter’s story to any young people she sees vaping, or who come into the shop she works in asking for them.
The impact on young lungs is only just emerging, but she knows there’s too much at stake to ignore the risks.
All flights were halted at Edinburgh Airport this morning due to an IT issue affecting its air traffic control provider.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the airport later announced service had resumed.
Its post read: “Flights have now resumed following the IT issue with our air traffic provider.
“We thank passengers for their patience and understanding.”
But passengers continue to feel the effects.
A Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Edinburgh was diverted to Dublin after going into a holding pattern over the Scottish capital.
And a live arrivals board on the airport’s website showed multiple flights diverted, delayed and cancelled.
Arrivals board at Edinburgh Airport. Pic: Edinburgh Airport
Morven McCall and Cody Stevenson, both 19, were due to fly easyJet from Edinburgh to Amsterdam on their first trip away together.
Morven told Sky News: “We literally just got into the airport and as soon as we walked through the door there was an announcement that it had been cancelled.
“I was ill over the summer and had to cancel two holidays already, this was our first time going away together. We are just gutted and stressed.”
Follow live: Latest updates as flights halted
Arrivals at Edinburgh Airport. File pic: PA
One passenger was on a plane when they found out.
They said: “We boarded our flight and pushed back on time for an 8.45 (am) departure, then sat for a while before the pilot told us what was happening.
“He updated us a couple of times, cabin crew are brilliant at handing out water etc, and I’m surprised that everyone appears to be upbeat. But then you do wonder how long for, just been told we’re hoping to be in the air in 20 minutes.”
Another passenger told us: “The first news was from the airport announcement as we were halfway through boarding, saying the airfield was closed due to air traffic control down.
“No one knew what was going on. We’d already been delayed a bit before boarding, with no reason. I suspect problems started about 9am.”
It comes after an earlier announcement that all flights had been halted.
“No flights are currently operating from Edinburgh Airport,” the previous statement said.
“Teams are working on the issue and will resolve as soon as possible.”
There was no timeframe for recovery initially, Sky News learned.
It’s understood by PA that the issue was not linked to today’s Cloudflare outage.
Edinburgh Trams also posted on X, writing: “If you’re travelling with us to @EDI_Airport this morning, please be aware that flights are not currently operating.”
The airport urged passengers to contact their airline for the latest information on flights.
An average of 43,000 passengers per day use the airport, which is served by 37 airlines flying to 155 destinations.
A former doctor has been charged over alleged sexual assaults on 38 patients in his care.
Nathaniel Spencer, 38, has been charged with 15 counts of sexual assault, 17 counts of assault by penetration, nine counts of sexual assault of a child under 13, three counts of assault a child under 13 by penetration and one count of attempted assault by penetration.
It follows a police investigation into alleged sexual offences between 2017 and 2021.
Staffordshire Police said in a statement the charges come after a complex investigation by the Public Protection Unit into sexual offences at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, in Stoke-on-Trent, and Russells Hall Hospital, in Dudley.
North Staffordshire Justice Centre
Ben Samples, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the West Midlands CPS Complex Casework Unit and Serious Violence, Organised Crime and Exploitation Unit, said: “We have decided to prosecute Nathaniel Spencer for a number of serious sexual offences allegedly carried out against patients while he was working as a doctor – including assault by penetration and sexual assault against a child.
“Our prosecutors have worked at length to support a detailed and complex investigation by Staffordshire Police, carefully reviewing the available evidence to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings.”
Spencer, from Birmingham, will appear at North Staffordshire Justice Centre on 20 January 2026.
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