I’m sure when you think of hookah you think of hippies, fruity flavors and a healthy, non-addictive, form of smoking. You’re not alone in these thoughts. According to a study published in 2012, the majority of hookah smokers believe that smoking hookah is significantly better for your health as opposed to smoking cigarettes. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.
The coal used to burn the tobacco is extremely detrimental to ones health. According to a study conducted by the World Health Organization, “Even after it has been passed through water, the smoke produced by a water pipe contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals.” Turns out many of us are misinformed about the effects hookah has on us.
Depending on the amount of hookah one smokes, many hookah smokers actually end up absorbing more toxins than they would if they had smoked cigarettes. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “A typical one-hour-long smoking session involves two-hundred puffs, while an average cigarette is twenty puffs. The volume of smoke inhaled during a typical hookah session is about 90,000 milliliters, compared with 500 milliliters inhaled when smoking a cigarette.” This means that one typical session of smoking hookah can be equivalent to 10-40 cigarettes! Just imagine how many cigarettes one is practically smoking if they smoke hookah every weekend! Although many of us are mislead by the sweet and fruity flavored water pipe, we must educate ourselves on just how deadly hookah can actually be.
Kristen Robertson
References:
http://www.cdc.gov/features/hookahsmoking/
http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2012/12_0082.htm
I actually just learned of statistics similar to this, this past year. As a lot of my friends turned 18 they all started their new obsession with hookah which seemed like a fun harmless thing to do at the time. There is also something called an E-hookah, similar to an E-cigarette except it is in the form of Hookah. People picked up this trend just as fast as they did the E-cigarette. Studies are saying that the cigarette version is a much healthier alternative to smoking a normal cigarette, I would be curious to see if the same is true for the E-Hookah.
This is an interesting article. Just like e-cigarettes have been invented to help cigarette addictions, there is also a new form of hookah (like the e-cigarette) called the e-hookah. Although it is a fairly new way of smoking shisha, so they can’t be sure of how safe it really is, it is supposedly a lot safer than smoking real hookah, because it doesn’t contain the toxins that are in shisha, and it can be filled with a fruity liquid that doesn’t contain nicotine, so it is essentially like just smoking a water vapor. However, it is a new trend on the market, so not enough research has been done yet to know how much safer it really is.
http://www.quitshisha.com/blog/are-electronic-shisha-pens-a-safe-alternative/