A senior at Garnet Valley High School in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania has won second prize in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, netting her $175,000 in winnings for her study on the effects of vaping.
The student, 18-year-old Natalia Orlovsky, was quoted by The Inquirer as having said that she was “incredibly surprised” by her second place status in the competition, a remark she made by phone just moments after she walked off the stage.
As for her inquiry into the impact of vaping on the human body, Orlovsky opted to study vapor’s impact on the human lungs — this as opposed to examining the potentially addictive nature of vaping nicotine, which seems to have no shortage of interest these days in light of vaping’s sudden rise in popularity.
While her findings indicated a lack of evidence that e-cigarette vapors alter human lung cell DNA in petri dishes, the findings do show that cell exposure to vapors triggers a chemical stress response inside of the cell.
In short, her findings were somewhat inconclusive. As The Inquirer reported, her findings show that it is a possibility that vaping could damage the DNA of human lung cells, but her research offered no definitive proof on the matter.
As for her inspiration, although she had never vaped herself, she was reportedly inspired by a friend’s studies of a related topic as part of Penn’s TREES program. In addition, she found herself concerned by the widespread use of vaporizers among her fellow teenagers.
First prize in the competition was awarded to Benjy Firester of New York City who received $250,000 for his research into how weather patterns can spread “late blight” fungus spores, which notably caused the potato famine seen in Ireland in the mid-1800s.
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