Heavy Metals In Herbal Shisha?

[aldonb1]

dear god... like a bowl last me 1-2 hours... 7 bowls a day equates to more time than i am freaking awake in a day...

[3rooker]

dear god... like a bowl last me 1-2 hours... 7 bowls a day equates to more time than i am freaking awake in a day...

That's what I was wondering.

TX

[Johnny_D]

I'm more worried how he only makes a 'session' last 20 mins. What the hell is he doing and how is he doing it?

Is he using bbq coals or something equally stupid?

JD

[3rooker]

I'm more worried how he only makes a 'session' last 20 mins. What the hell is he doing and how is he doing it?

Is he using bbq coals or something equally stupid?

JD

Don't know! Why would you want a session to only last 20 minutes?! The fun is just getting started at 20 minutes. Everything is in full swing! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

TX

[Johnny_D]

I'm more worried how he only makes a 'session' last 20 mins. What the hell is he doing and how is he doing it?

Is he using bbq coals or something equally stupid?

JD

Don't know! Why would you want a session to only last 20 minutes?! The fun is just getting started at 20 minutes. Everything is in full swing! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

TX

Well exactly

Most of us get a couple of hours from a bowl

JD

[mgcsinc]

Just to chime in - as much as I like to point out the dangers in hookah smoking, I just don't believe that if its being done right it could possibly be pouring heavy metals into your body to that extent. I'm worried that there's something (or someone) out there that's poisoning you, and it's gonna be missed because people want to blame the hookah.

[3rooker]

Just to chime in - as much as I like to point out the dangers in hookah smoking, I just don't believe that if its being done right it could possibly be pouring heavy metals into your body to that extent. I'm worried that there's something (or someone) out there that's poisoning you, and it's gonna be missed because people want to blame the hookah.

Someone poisoning him? That's kind of a far shot. But it could be. I can understand when you would get winded walking up stairs and just can't function, but I keep wondering what's pumping the heavy metals into you.

TX

[3rooker]

Do you smoke alone or in a group? Maybe someone doesn't know what they are doing.

TX

[zoddi]

It's not getting winded. It's a problem of overheating. I smoke both alone and with a friend or two. Unless I'm having some other source of metal intake, which I can't pinpoint, this is the only logical one. I also have 4 different hookahs I use and have tried using only specific ones.

[Johnny_D]

It's not getting winded. It's a problem of overheating. I smoke both alone and with a friend or two. Unless I'm having some other source of metal intake, which I can't pinpoint, this is the only logical one. I also have 4 different hookahs I use and have tried using only specific ones.

Your really not telling us anything.

Pictures of your setup would be helpful. What tobacco, What bowl, What coals, foil or screen?

Alleged metal poisoning aside... what did you expect to happen when smoking 5-8 bowls a day?

JD

[aldonb1]

haha its just a crazy ad for SOEX.... haha jp jp... hope u feel better man

[nofrendo]

Is there even time to smoke 12 bowls a day??? along with the meth you must be using to keep you up, I don't see how there is the time...

[Allia22]

It's possible... just put 3 40mm coals on the thing and have at 'er

[Officer Rod Farva]

Sounds like an anti-smoking website. "Ask Pat" . Real scholarly. His table contains no units...the units could be so small that they are still insignificant...or not...it just takes me down to disregard another crackpot website. The units could be tons, ng, Kg/cubic Mm...there's no telling. A real scientist or someone wouldn't make such a basic mistake...even an anti-smoking one. My guess is that a large amount of the heavy metals come from the charcoal...a lot of the carcinogens. I would expect to see chrysene only if someone were using charcoal briquettes for a BBQ, the organics they use as lighting substituents would be perfect in the production. According to the slightly more scholarly Wikipedia, Chrysene is only a suspected carcinogen...if its anything like Benzene's activity...its not very carcinogenic.

According to the slightly more scholarly website of OSHA, the maximum tolerable limit for Chrysene is the same as other coal/tar gases:

"* Coal-tar-pitch Volatile's standard is exceeded only if the following conditions are met:
1. The volatile emissions are from distillation residues of coal, petroleum, wood, or other organic matter, and
2. Volatile emissions are found to contain more than 0.2 mg/M3 of benzene-soluble material and
3. Laboratory analysis by mass spectrometry of the benzene-soluble fraction confirms the presence of benzo(a)pyrene and/or one or more of five additional fused polycyclic hydrocarbons: anthracene, acridine, pyrene, chrysene and phenanthrene."

I don't know that hookah could be considered or similar to a distillation residue...that would be the waste products out of the butt end of a plant that distilled coal and tar and such. True, charcoal is derived from wood, but its not a distillation residue. A distillation residue would likely be a gas or a smutty sludge that forms at the bottom of those distillation columns. That eliminates condition one, condition two we can't be sure about and condition three we can't be sure about, either.

Chrysene is a chemical, it is similar to benzene...is it dangerous in the amounts found in hookah smoke? Can't say and that chart that calls it a tumor initiator is a little extreme. From all of five minutes of research, it doesn't seem conclusive that hookah smoke contains enough chrysene to worry about, and even if it did, its not a proven carcinogen...although I would strongly suspect it has a weak propensity for it, similar to benzene.

What if I said chicken contains N-bromo-bispropyl-2,4,beta-trihydroxy-phenylbutylamine (BPBTP)? It contained .206...ten times the amount of pork that only contains .0196? I then said that this chemical is a tumor initiator...so don't think chicken is safer than pork! Same thing, no units! What if the units were ng? Where is a proper citation of the data. The final message is the important one...don;t smoke either...scare tactics. Smoking's bad, thats for sure, but some people are dedicated to annoying other people into stopping it. That one study that one guy quoted...anyone else remember that? I pointed out, based on government data and the data presented by the study, it would take hundreds or thousands of years of smoking once per day to accumulate enough to constitute an LD-50, or a lethal dose 50% of the time? From one study that one guy, the sciency guy who slams back and forth with me, I demonstrated that the lethal doses in question were close to irrelevant in relation to heavy metals. Sure heavy metals are bad, but from my calculations the heavy metal content according to that one guy's study he quoted are irrelevant in real terms of lethality...health issues maybe...but it doesn't seem likely in amounts that are 100,000 times lower than a lethal limit.

Its easy to say "It contains chemical X."...chemical X is bad for you. Don't use it. If it really was that bad...studies would include the lethal limits, LD-50s and so on, to show you how bad they are...when they just say "It has Chemical X and its bad." they are trying to scare you. Smoking is bad....we all know that. I wish some of these "scientists" would find something productive to do with their time, rather than bombarding us with fake statistics.

If I then said, in my example study earlier that the units were micrograms and that an LD-50 of BPBTP was .350 micrograms, then you could be afraid of chicken...but still not necessarily pork. If I really want to stop you from eating chicken, I would include how close a lethal dose is to what's found in chicken. If these people want to really scare us, the best way to do it is with the truth. If they conveniently leave out details, those details would only serve to hurt their case, generally, thats why they ignore them.

Source: California Meat Processing Information Council


Here's what I want to see, I challenge the scientific community:

Hookah Smoking, one hour:

Chemical X .482 mg/cubic meter
Chemical Y 19.67 ng/cubic meter
Chemical Z 574.6 ng/cubic meter


Chemical X: LD-50 .800 mg/cubic meter [1], JAMA [4] lists health complications in the kidneys in concentrations as low as .500 mg/cubic meter.
Chemical Y:LD-50 100 ng/cubic meter [2] Doctors link liver damage and renal failure in patients to Chemical Y at around 25 ng/cubic meter [5]
Chemical Z:Known Carcinogen [3], In seizures and comas associated with excessive smoking, doctors linked Chemical Z in 6 different studies [6,7,8,9,10,11]. It is presumably highly toxic and contributing to nerve and brain damage [12].

[1] Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Toxicity of Chemical X in Primates and Mice". Vol. 118, Sept. 2003, Pages 84-88.
[2]...Etc.

Now thats scholarly and frightening. Short too. They may overload us with pages of theoretical metabolic pathways, conjecture as to tetratogenocity effects in monkeys, whatever...all B.S. until they ante up the data. Read the Merck Index (Chemicals edition) sometime. That's scholarly and concise.

I suspect, your doctor's trying to scare you with irrelevant crapola. Carbon monoxide...thats a problem/threat...heavy metals...not so much, from what I have read. Tar, eh. Show me that glycerine is as dangerous as what comes out of the end of a cigarette and I'll concede that the tar is 1:1 as dangerous. The term tar is kinda vague and doesn't pertain to hookahs in the same way it does in cigarettes. Nicotine, they have been trying to pin something there for sometime: not dangerous...addictive, definitely. Some people would like to link it to cancer or "Chromosomal damage" but lack real, resonating data. Assume smoking is bad for you though. Edited June 5, 2007 by Officer Rod Farva

[hookaheveryday]

When I clean my hoses, a lot of nasty "tar like" residue is inside of them, even with my plastic hoses. The water in the base always smells putrid. Why shouldn't I assume that the same substance is building up in my lungs? I think its obvious that smoking a hookah everyday is dangerous enough, and smoking an upwards of 6 bowls per day is even moreso. I know that there is a severe lack of scientific data that says so, but if I continue to smoke this volume for many years my lungs will no doubt be comparable in color to a cigarette smoker's. I think its absurd to assume the cause of the OP's medical condition is caused by something else or incorrect smoking procedure, even if we don't know his medical history.

[mgcsinc]

I think its absurd to assume the cause of the OP's medical condition is caused by something else or incorrect smoking procedure, even if we don't know his medical history.

No one is saying that smoking that much shisha will not cause health problems - the issue is whether it is specifically causing heavy metal poisoning. The issues are separate.

Incidentally, while the OP's hookah habits may seem extreme to us, they are apparently not unprecedented. In a study from a few decades ago somewhere in the middle east or Asia (I forget the exact reference, but I will gladly get it for you if you want), the researchers described different groups of hookah smokers on the basis of smoking frequency, and the OP would actually not be placed in the highest-frequency group (he'd be in the second highest, if I am remembering the bands correctly). The smoking habits wherever that study took place were actually very similar to the OP's - many shorter sessions rather than a few longer ones.

[zoddi]

I just received report from the doctor that I've acquired numerous allergies to different heavy metals. He said it's common to acquire these from taking up smoking. But the doctor says that he doubts my problems are rooted from the inhalation of said metals, but instead could be from something I've been able to wear / use all my life until now that I've developed these allergies.

As to the smoking that many times a day.. when your job has you sometimes not interacting with people for days and sitting in front of a computer or otherwise, hookah becomes a companion. I'm not charring the shisha, resulting in short smokes. I have a preference for unwashed shishas like al waha and naklha, and prefer nakleh quick lites, or occasionally natural lemon wood coals. I haven't smoked since I made this thread, but now that the doctor gave a "go ahead" of sorts, I may pick it up again, although of course in lesser amounts, and possibly try to get used to some washed shishas in my routine.

[L'Oignon]

I think you should maybe wait a few months, then doctors appointment, and then consider picking hookah back up sparingly

[zoddi]

hmm, guess hookah's out of the question. I thought I had narrowed it down to something else. Even the doctor said he made a mistake. So I started up again. Lo and behold, I passed out from heat again. Bye all

[Allia22]

Oh wow...

[azcoyote]

Reading this post a few questions come to mind. forgive me if someone else addressed this.

1. Has the doctor identified which heavy metals are elevated?
2. If it's mercury, have you looked at your diet? Do you eat a lot of swordfish or tuna? Do you have mercury/silver amalgam fillings in your mouth? The acidity from constant hookah smoking may be liberating mercury from your dental work.
3. If lead is identified, my question is - are you using glazed hookah heads from third world countries? Some cheap imported glazed pottery contains lead. It is known to leach into acidic foods like salsa. We don't put lemonade in our Mexican glazed pitcher for that reason. If such glazes are used in a hookah head, a similar problem certainly could occur. Have your hookah head and other pottery that you use to hold food tested.

4. Heavy metal chelation therapy is something you should look into.

Good luck with quitting.

[3rooker]

Hope you get better. I would reccomend staying away from the hookah for a while. Like a long while. Give your body some time to repair what it can.

TX

[zoddi]

Reading this post a few questions come to mind. forgive me if someone else addressed this.

1. Has the doctor identified which heavy metals are elevated?
2. If it's mercury, have you looked at your diet? Do you eat a lot of swordfish or tuna? Do you have mercury/silver amalgam fillings in your mouth? The acidity from constant hookah smoking may be liberating mercury from your dental work.
3. If lead is identified, my question is - are you using glazed hookah heads from third world countries? Some cheap imported glazed pottery contains lead. It is known to leach into acidic foods like salsa. We don't put lemonade in our Mexican glazed pitcher for that reason. If such glazes are used in a hookah head, a similar problem certainly could occur. Have your hookah head and other pottery that you use to hold food tested.

4. Heavy metal chelation therapy is something you should look into.

Good luck with quitting.

good questions. I don't know exactly what I was tested for, but I do know that I'm showing allergies to nickel, cobalt, and copper. The last one was said to be extremely rare compared to the first two. I'm not sure about mercury though. I was using various different heads before, but never had any major dental work done. Currently, I've been using a mya head.

Heavy metal chelation therapy. I'll definitely look into that! Thanks a ton for the insight.

[ghostofdavid]

Don't use any antiperspirant deodorant either. They contain metals that, if you are sensitive to, can make you ill.

[Allia22]

Don't use any antiperspirant deodorant either. They contain metals that, if you are sensitive to, can make you ill.

+1, it's been shown to cause alzheimer's... although that's a risk I'm willing to take. I've got all my jewelry coated with clear nail polish because I too am allergic to nickel. Never knew you could be allergic to copper. There was that one cosmetic company that was advertising that it was an essential mineral for younger-looking skin for a while