Latest update November 29th, 2024 1:00 AM
Smoking Hookah; is it dangerous or cool?
==Health Facts==
By Rehanna Ramsay
Kaieteur News – While the dangers of smoking tobacco are widely known, tobacco companies have made it a point to find new ways to continue to push their products, influencing a new generation down a dangerous path.
With the introduction of devices like e-cigarettes and hookah or shisha, smoking has once more been repackaged to make tobacco and nicotine “feel safe,” and “look cool.”
As is explained by several medical articles, hookah smoking isn’t any safer than using traditional cigarettes— it is actually more dangerous.
And since the water in the hookah does not filter out the toxic ingredients in the tobacco smoke, hookah smokers may actually inhale more tobacco smoke than cigarette smokers do. This is mainly due to the large volume of smoke they inhale in one smoking session, which can last as long as 60 minutes. This means that even engaging in smoking hookah, every once in a while, can pose a risk to one’s health.
Medical research evidence shows that besides tobacco, hookah smoke contains high levels of toxic compounds, including tar, carbon monoxide, heavy metals, and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens).
In fact, hookah smokers are exposed to more carbon monoxide and smoke than cigarette smokers. Hookah smoking also delivers about the same amount of nicotine as cigarette smoking, possibly leading to tobacco dependence. As it is with cigarette smoking, hookah smoking is linked to lung and oral cancers, heart disease, and other serious illnesses. Additionally, hookah pipes used in hookah bars and cafes may not be cleaned properly, risking the spread of infectious diseases.
Yet, many young people today, have been led to believe that hookah smoking is relatively safe. The origin of the hookah shisha, or water pipe dates back centuries ago.
The device first appeared in the 1500s in India and later spread across the Middle East like wildfire. Today, the smoking device is being used to repackage and reintroduce tobacco products to an entirely new generation. At almost every major bar, the hookah pipe known as a “narghile,” “arghile” or “hubble-bubble” is used to smoke fruit-flavoured tobacco and is the centre of social activity with one hookah usually being passed around a group of smokers.
Besides those who engage in the actual use of the device, the research shows that hookah smoke poses dangers associated with secondhand smoke.
Second-hand smoke from shisha/hookah pipes is dangerous because it contains harmful substances like carbon monoxide, toxic chemicals, and other toxic particles.
Medical research has shown that the smoke from the activity not only puts users but hookah bar workers at risk of lung and heart disease and inflammation normally associated with pulmonary and cardiac disorders.
Hookahs are known to emit clouds of smoke making them even more pollutant and environmentally unsafe than traditional cigarettes. During one hookah-smoking session, a smoker can inhale the equivalent of the smoke from 150 cigarettes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Studies showed the air quality in the rooms where people smoked and in an adjacent room during about one hour of hookah or cigarette smoking and compared the readings to nonsmoking homes.
Air filters used to measure levels of carbon monoxide, black carbon and pollution particles in rooms where hookah was used found 2.5 microns or smaller (PM 2.5), which can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream present.
A Reuters article on Hookah and the environment, quoted Thomas Eissenberg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies tobacco use saying “People are not as aware of the risks as they should be, and many mistakenly believe that passing smoke through water will reduce the health risks.”
“Even when the smoke has passed through water, which makes it cooler and easier to inhale, that smoke still contains many of the same carcinogens as cigarette smoke,” Eissenberg said.
He advised current hookah smokers to quit or to seek help with their habits. “If you are using a hookah at home, you are putting yourself and all members of your family at risk for tobacco-caused disease,” he said.
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