Home » Hot Topics » Shisha may be more harmful than you think. Smoking shisha, hookah, or other water-pipe based tobacco product may seem harmless in a social setting, but there is no safe level of smoking for any tobacco product, whether it is shisha or cigarettes. Shisha tobacco usually contains tobacco sweetened with fruit or molasses sugar, giving it a fruity aroma. It is smoked through a water-pipe, also sometimes known as a shisha, nargile, hookah, arghile, goza or hubble bubble.
Shisha tobacco is usually flavoured to increase the desire of the product, while also masking the harshness of the tobacco and other chemicals.
Some products contain more nicotine than cigarettes, making them more addictive. Many young people are not aware that smoking shisha tobacco exposes them to similar or higher levels of harmful chemicals than cigarette smoking.
The pipe is usually quite large and consists of a water chamber, a tobacco chamber, and one or more flexible tubes stemming from it that allow multiple smokers to inhale at the same time.
Hookah tobacco is often sweetened with molasses, fruit pulp, or honey, with additional flavors such as coconut, mint, or coffee. These flavorings sweeten the taste and aroma of the tobacco, making it especially appealing to young people.
Hookah pipes have been in use for about years, originating in India and Asia. In the early s, Hakim Abdul Fath, a physician from India, invented the hookah, mistakenly believing the health hazards of tobacco smoke would be minimized by passing it through water before inhalation. The tobacco chamber in a hookah consists of a bowl containing burning charcoal that is placed on top of the flavored tobacco. Charcoal is separated from tobacco by perforated aluminum foil. As the charcoal heats the tobacco below, smoke is created.
When users draw on the stem hose of the hookah, the smoke is pulled through the water chamber, cooling it before it is inhaled into the lungs. It is a common misconception that smoking from a hookah removes nicotine and other toxins from tobacco. While water-cooled smoke is less harsh on delicate lung tissue, the toxicity of the smoke is unchanged and the cancer-causing chemicals present in the hookah tobacco are not filtered out by this process. Hookah smoke contains many of the same harmful chemicals in traditional cigarette smoke, including:.
Some hookah tobacco products claim they don't contain tar, but that is misleading. No tobacco contains tar until it is burned, or in the case of hookah tobacco, heated. This difference leads some to believe that the toxicity of hookah tar may be less than that of cigarette tar, which is not the case. Additionally, the charcoal that is used to heat the tobacco contains carbon monoxide, metals, and other cancer-causing agents like polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
This adds another level of danger to hookah smokers. A typical manufactured cigarette contains between 7 and 22 milligrams of nicotine, depending on the brand, with about 1 mg being absorbed by the smoker.
An average hookah bowl contains as much nicotine as a pack of 20 cigarettes. Nicotine is an addictive drug, so smoking hookah can be every bit as addictive as smoking cigarettes. Smokers inhale to milliliters of smoke in the 20 puffs it takes to smoke a cigarette. If they're smoking hookah, which is typically an event lasting 45 minutes to an hour, smokers inhale approximately 90, ml of smoke and take as many as puffs on the water pipe. Hookah is also called narghile, argileh, shisha, hubble-bubble , and goza.
A typical modern hookah has a head with holes in the bottom , a metal body, a water bowl, and a flexible hose with a mouthpiece. Hookah smoking is typically done in groups, with the same mouthpiece passed from person to person. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Minus Related Pages. On This Page. Hookah Use Health Effects References. Hookah smoking is NOT a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes.
Hookah Use. Secondhand smoke is a big issue, too. The burning charcoal is harmful to people nearby. A one-hour waterpipe session generates secondhand smoke with as much carbon monoxide as 20 cigarettes. Salah had the same assumption about shisha that a lot of young people do, smoking shisha is better for you than smoking cigarettes. After realising that shisha can actually be worse for you, Salah took the journey to stop smoking shisha, despite wanting to impress friends or fit in.
Watch his story on how he made the decision to quit and the benefits of going smokefree. Looking for Reasons to quit smoking A plan to get ready to quit Tips to stay on track Advice on having another go at quitting Ex-smokers' stories Fact sheets. Information for professionals Quit education Client groups Order resources.
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