Hookah smoking: Is it safer than smoking cigarettes?

Hookah smoking is not safer — and may even be more harmful — than smoking cigarettes.
From MayoClinic.com

Q: Is hookah smoking safer than cigarettes? I've been told that the water used in the hookah makes the tobacco less toxic.

There is a myth that hookah smoking is safer than smoking cigarettes because the hookah smoke is filtered through water before it is inhaled. But recent studies have found that hookah smokers actually inhale more nicotine than do cigarette smokers because of the massive volume of smoke they inhale.

Hookah — also called narghile, shisha and goza — is a water pipe. The device has been used for centuries in the Middle East and Asia to smoke tobacco. Now, hookah bars and cafes are popping up across the United States — fueled by the growing popularity of hookah smoking among teens and young adults.

The hookah device consists of four parts:

• A base, or smoke chamber, which is partially filled with water
• A bowl, which contains tobacco and the heating source
• A pipe that connects the bowl to the base and dips into the water in the base
• A hose, a second tube in the pipe that does not dip into the water but opens into air in the base and allows users to inhale the hookah smoke

When a smoker inhales through the tube, a pressure difference forces air past the heating source and heats the tobacco, which gives off smoke. The smoke is pulled away from the tobacco and passes through the water and into the smoke chamber — where it is inhaled by the smoker.

Although many believe that the water in the hookah filters out all the "bad stuff" in the tobacco smoke, this isn't true. According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) advisory, a typical one-hour session of hookah smoking exposes the user to 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette. Even after passing through the water, the tobacco smoke produced still contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens). Hookah smoking also delivers significant levels of nicotine — the very addictive substance in tobacco.

The trend of hookah smoking has doctors and public health experts concerned because — despite the claim of many users — smoking from a hookah is just as dangerous as smoking a cigarette.

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