except we are not breathing in fire ( gasses that are on fire) ... a typical wood fire does that but when smoking weed the heat cinder is a cinder not an open flame ... the open flame would be the lighter to ignite the cinder then the flame goes into a super charged charring cinder ( cherry) that incinerates anything it touches while forming nearby biochemicals into an aerosol.
Volcano vape reaches 525 F ... combustion temps start in the 500 F range don't they ?
Dr Donald Tashkin has the info on how a cannabis smoker is protected just a bit more than a non smoker ( believe that or not) ... he mostly was measuring pulmonary lung function but when asked what mechanisms are responsible the patented Gov info is used to make the determination ( patent # 6630507 -cannabinoids as anti oxidants and neuroprotectants )
I'm not entirely sure on the combustion temps, so 500 may be right! I just saw 427 combustion and I'm fairly certain that is too low to be combusting. I'm not even super familiar with the volcano, is the heat setting on volcano for the heater itself, or is it measuring the oven/load temp?
But yes, we're not inhaling fire when we're combusting, but the flower is being heated to a super charged charring cinder, or cherry, which is going through a chemical change. Which is why you get ash vs what your typical AVB comes out as. So if you take a joint as an example, the cherry on the end provides super heated gasses, released from the continuously smoldering cherry, to the rest of the joint, which should be vaporizing the flower that isnt touching the cherry, on its way through the joint and into your mouth/lungs. As you inhale you introduce more airflow to the cherry, increasing the temp, and you're still combusting/smoldering the plant material the cherry touches, you inhale those gasses along with whatever was vaporized with the residual heat from the cherry.
Even though you're getting both combustion + vaporization, I dont think the vaporization occurring in a joint is nearly as efficient as the vaporization occurring in our vapes. Although its not an open flame, there is still a chemical change when theres a cherry involved.
You have to reach combustion temps in order to get a cherry. You can heat flower all you want, but it wont actually glow red until it's gone through a chemical change and the plant matter itself is turning to ash.
Then of course you have the guys who snap bongs and hold their lighter over their bowl until it turns 100% to ash and pulls through, but thats different!