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A hookah, also known as a water pipe, is an instrument used to smoke vaporized flavored tobacco (called shisha). Vapor or smoke passes through a glass basin of water and charcoal heated air before it is inhaled through a pipe.
The device can have single or multiple flexible tubes with a mouthpiece attached, and can be elaborately ornate and grand in scale, or a simple handheld water pipe.
Depending on the region, the hookah is identified by several names – called a nargile in parts of Syria, Italy, Cyprus, Iraq, and Greece.
Smoking from a hookah has gained popularity outside of its native region – in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East – as hookah bars have sprung up in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and South Africa.
A hookah bar or lounge, also called a shisha bar, is where patrons engage socially and share tobacco laced vapor from a communal device.
Hookah users are under the misperception that smoking through a water pipe is healthier than cigarette smoking. Yet inhaling vaporized tobacco has been found to carry the same health risks.
It has been suggested by health officials that smoking a hookah exposes the smoker to more nicotine than cigarette smokers.
Smoking a cigarette takes mere minutes in comparison to an average 30 minute session with a hookah. Nicotine is not filtered when inhaled through the vapor.
Nicotine is the addictive element of tobacco. An average cigarette yields about 1 mg of absorbed nicotine. Nicotine is an alkaloid found in the nightshade family of plants that acts as a stimulant. This stimulant effect is the main factor responsible for the dependence-forming properties of tobacco smoking. In high amounts, nicotine poisoning can be fatal.
Daily water pipe use equates to a 10 cigarette a day smoking habit. The CDC reports hookah smokers absorb higher concentrations of toxins, inhaling 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke, and are at the same risk of developing oral cancer, lung cancer, and reduced lung function as regular cigarette smokers.
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The American Journal of Public Health conducted a California tobacco study and attributed the increase of hookah vapor use among young, college educated adults to the assumed belief it had fewer adverse health effects in comparison to traditional smoking.
The American Heart Association (AHA) considers the popularity of hookah use a “growing threat to the public,” especially among urban youth and college students, with easy access to hookah bars. Hoohak bars are under-regulated as the laws vary from state to state. The AHA found the typical hookah smoker is a 26-year-old white male, and noted a statistically significant increase in use by those in 12th grade and in college in recent years.
The latest findings from a University of California San Francisco (UCSF) study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention – a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research – also encountered a mistaken assumption of safety among hookah users.
Volunteers, eight men and five women with a previous history of cigarette smoking, were asked to partake of the pipe for three sessions or 11 cigarettes per day. Individuals vary in how their bodies metabolize and excrete toxic substances, so for a better comparison, the researchers had the same person smoke cigarettes and a water pipe on different days.
Researchers found a harmful presence of toxins when testing blood and urine samples of participants. Dr. Neal Benowitz, a UCSF tobacco researcher, and his chemist colleague Peyton Jacob III, PhD, identified nearly twice the trace amounts of the carcinogen benzene in hookah smokers.
Furthermore, the researchers measured carbon monoxide in the breath over 24 hours and found levels 2.5 higher after water pipe use in comparison to cigarette smoking. Acrylamide, known to damage the nervous system and naphthalene, known to damage red blood cells were also found in samples.
[Image via Shutterstock/Small hookah Wikicommons]
Harmful Hookah Habit, Not A Healthy Alternative To Cigarette Smoking is a post from: The Inquisitr
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