With the look and feel of real cigarettes, electronic cigarettes are experiencing a boom in popularity. But as the product’s popularity rises, so do the unknowns about its potential impact on public health.

As scientific studies on e-cigarettes attempt to catch up with their popularity, it remains to be seen if the products will be a boon to smoking cessation or a setback toward the goal of cutting out nicotine for good.

E-cigarettes vapour are battery-powered devices that convert nicotine into vapor. The products are sold over the counter and are not subject to the same regulation as actual cigarettes. A 2011 survey showed that about 21 percent of smokers had used e-cigarettes at least once — up from about 10 percent of smokers who took the same Web survey in 2010, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published online in February in Nicotine & Tobacco Research. About 7 percent of smokers who received the same survey in 2010 via postal mail also said they had tried e-cigarettes at least once.

The Food and Drug Administration announced in 2011 that the agency plans to propose regulating e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, according to Jennifer Haliski, a public affairs officer for FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. Any product containing nicotine from tobacco, unless marketed for therapeutic purposes, is considered a tobacco product, according to the 2009 court case, Sottera Inc. v. Food and Drug Administration.

However, concrete regulations on e-cigarettes have yet to be issued, as the science is still catching up

“Further research is needed to assess the potential public health benefits and risks of electronic cigarettes and other novel tobacco products,” Haliski said.

Getting regular smokers to quit is a potential public health benefit of e-cigarettes, said Maciej Goniewicz, PhD, an assistant professor of oncology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences.

Goniewicz said that so far he sees e-cigarettes being mostly used by regular smokers — rather than first-time smokers — as an alternative to smoking cigarettes, offering another chance to quit after a relapse. Goniewicz is one of five authors of a Nicotine & Tobacco Research study published online in April 2012 that compared nicotine and organic compound vapors of 16 e-cigarette brands available in U.S., United Kingdom and Polish markets. The study found 300 puffs of e-cigarettes labeled as having high nicotine levels delivered 0.5 to 15.4 milligrams of nicotine — considered negligible compared to toxins in regular cigarettes.