Inhalant Use and Disorder Conference

A wide assortment of consumer products including surface cleaners, solvents, air fresheners and paints lend themselves to abuse by inhalation and contain a wide variety of chemicals that are known to be harmful. Reported affects include neurological symptoms that reflect damage to parts of the brain involved in the control of cognition, movement, vision and hearing as well as damage to the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. However these reported affects remain controversial, as they are based on occupational exposures in industrial settings as opposed to the short periods of exposure typical of inhalation.1 To further obscure matters, most published material regarding these harmful affects ignore the distinctions between materials, and attributes to each and every product the potentially harmful effects of them all. Research utilizing electroencephalogram tracings revealed that abnormalities due to inhalant use were temporary and readings reverted to normal once the solvents effects had worn off. Challenging the belief that glue sniffing causes permanent brain damage researchers have noted that such claims seem to stem from isolated case reports.2 “Long term studies of young people who have engaged in VSA are comparatively rare (and)...there is a scarcity of reliable information on the long ter