Hookah And Relationship To Your Health

[Altron]

So I was searching around youtube tonight and I found this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRCjgNOuj9I


I suggest everyone should watch it and think about it.

I don't understand how they could even air this when their arguments aren't even valid.

They compared a single cigarette to a whole bowl of shisha...
They also supposedly said that it increases cancer and other diseases, but show no hard proof evidence that it does so. Only a six year study of smoking from hookah?

Also, every tin of shisha I have bought states that it has no tar in it so how does that work?
70% more tar?


I don't understand why everyone is so ignorant to the whole idea of smoking. I understand that its not good for my health... thats obvious considering its smoking, but its not such a major problem that they have to go "undercover".

Also, I would almost guarantee that if you asked someone what was in a cigarette that they wouldn't be able to tell you. The only difference is that there is a small warning on the boxes (unless its from a different country like Canada) and obviously thats not going to stop someone from smoking.

The bottom line is that I don't understand at all..... maybe they should change drinking age to 18. Oh wait... then we would have even more problems...

Fucking ridiculous Edited March 27, 2007 by Altron

[aldonb1]

haha dude... its FOX news... wtf u expect.

[djbomberto]

wow thats shocking. i know its bad, so hurry up and do it.

[Scheetz]

aldonb was on the right track. But I will add to it properly.

Its FOX news, in DETROIT.



I love how 70% more nicotine is supposed to be truth! Please, that would mean after 1 bowl I would be shaking for hours until I could smoke again. 36% more Tar, please. Designate what tar means and maybe it is believable. The CO is the only one I can somewhat agree with. But I highly doubt those numbers are close to the truth.

I love how they try to say the waiter is lying when they are telling the truth. Its called stop making bullshit questions that try and trick the person into answering wrong.
"its not as dangerous as far as nicotine." Fucking media, I would be happy if the media never existed. Specifically FOX, they are completely worthless.


Is that the same NOVI cafe as the guy thats on here??

[Scheetz]

Just wanted to add. I sent an email to the representative of FOX news in Detroit and to the Article representatives at the medical site Mayo Clinic that is linked that hosted the information that they used. This is what was sent to them.


Hookah smoking: Is it safer than smoking cigarettes?

I suggest as a website that claims truth that they research their facts properly. Making ridiculous claims about Nicotine content in their test studies is not something I would be proud of. You claim the nicotine is incredibly higher than 1 cigarette, however you do not release what type of tobacco/shisha you are using. If you pack a hookah bowl with hookah tobacco/shisha you can buy in the United States and compare it to a cigarette you will find the cigarette has a much higher dose of nicotine. Now if you created false statistics in your study or used tobacco that is not intended for a hookah then you are using pure cigarette tobacco which in your case will yield your results. I am under the belief that you did the latter.

If the nicotine content is as you say with hookah tobacco, then an addiction would occur. I have never in my 4 years of smoking met a single person that is addicted to hookah smoking and can not go for weeks without picking up the hose.

I look forward to your rebuttal.



I guess I can say this is the first time where I was irritated enough to actually send the News Media an email.

[ASUSEAN1]

Also, every tin of shisha I have bought states that it has no tar in it so how does that work?
70% more tar?

there is no tar in the tobacco but once it is lit that is when you get the tar. allthough i do dount those numbers are anywhere close to correct

[Scheetz]

Also, every tin of shisha I have bought states that it has no tar in it so how does that work?
70% more tar?

there is no tar in the tobacco but once it is lit that is when you get the tar. allthough i do dount those numbers are anywhere close to correct

he has his numbers mixed up. Its 70% nicotine, 36% tar.

[cafesaden]

i think they are purely going off of session time. 1 hour for person smoking hookah straight, compared to 1 single cigarrette. which is rediculous because hookah hits are 10 x that of a cigarrette and a cigarrette last around 5 minutes. if they compared the same amount of smoking time and smoking amount, their facts would be completely the opposite

[LilTank13]

I am interested in seeing cancer rates of Middle Eastern countries, especially in the respiratory area and tracts, versus those in the United States. That would add some depth to their otherwise biased study.

[sambookamax]

Just wanted to add. I sent an email to the representative of FOX news in Detroit and to the Article representatives at the medical site Mayo Clinic that is linked that hosted the information that they used. This is what was sent to them.


Hookah smoking: Is it safer than smoking cigarettes?

I suggest as a website that claims truth that they research their facts properly. Making ridiculous claims about Nicotine content in their test studies is not something I would be proud of. You claim the nicotine is incredibly higher than 1 cigarette, however you do not release what type of tobacco/shisha you are using. If you pack a hookah bowl with hookah tobacco/shisha you can buy in the United States and compare it to a cigarette you will find the cigarette has a much higher dose of nicotine. Now if you created false statistics in your study or used tobacco that is not intended for a hookah then you are using pure cigarette tobacco which in your case will yield your results. I am under the belief that you did the latter.

If the nicotine content is as you say with hookah tobacco, then an addiction would occur. I have never in my 4 years of smoking met a single person that is addicted to hookah smoking and can not go for weeks without picking up the hose.

I look forward to your rebuttal.



I guess I can say this is the first time where I was irritated enough to actually send the News Media an email.

Kick Ass Scheetz! I would like to hear what happens!

[Eissenberg]

I know we have discussed this topic in the past, so I'll try to be brief, but feel compelled to add the necessary qualifiers at the end.

First, the correct figures for waterpipe smoke relative to cigarette smoke are:

36 times more "tar"
8.5 times more carbon monoxide (CO)
1.7 times more nicotine

Please note that these are *multipliers*. To give you hard numbers for tar, it was 802 mg tar in waterpipe smoke versus 22.3 mg tar in cigarette smoke.

Second, "tar" is a smoke constituent, not a tobacco constituent, so there is no "tar" in a box of tobacco (or a pack of cigarettes) but there is "tar" in the smoke produced from waterpipe tobacco and produced by a pack of cigarettes. "Tar" is defined as the "nicotine-free, dry particulate matter" in smoke. Meaning take some smoke, take out all the nicotine and all the water, and whatever you have left is "tar". Thus defined, virtually any smoke has "tar" (unless, I suppose, you were to ignite pharmacologically pure nicotine).

Third, the data I provided above come from two separate studies of machine-generated smoke. In one, Dr. Alan Shihadeh in Beirut Lebanon measured the way waterpipe tobacco smokers in Beirut cafes smoked, and then he programmed a waterpipe smoking machine to smoke the same way. You can find the report on PubMed or Google Scholar by looking for Shihadeh and Saleh (published in 2005). In the other, Dr. Mirjana Djordjevic (now at the U.S. National Cancer Institute) measured how cigarette smokers smoked a cigarette, and programmed a cigarette smoking machine to smoke in the same way. You can find the report in the same places by looking for Djordjevic, Stellman, and Zang (2000). Combining separate studies like this is *not at all* the ideal way to do science (methods, measures, and other factors may vary uncontrollably across studies). Unfortunately, no one has done a study comparing the two "head-to-head" (yet!).

Fourth, as someone commented, waterpipe puffs are 10 times larger than cigarette puffs, on average (that is, 500 ml for a waterpipe puff, 50 ml for a cigarette puff). In addition, waterpipe use episodes are much longer -- about 45 minutes (over 100 puffs) compared to about 5 minutes (10-12 puffs). So, we are talking about much larger smoke amounts for the waterpipe compared to the cigarette -- thus accounting for the big differences in "tar" and CO. You might reasonably wonder why there is *only* 36 times more tar and *only* 8 times more CO in what amounts to 100 times the volume of smoke! In a related point, I don't actually care if, ml by ml, waterpipe smoke has less tar, co, and nicotine than cigarette smoke (which is probably the case). When someone inhales 50,000 ml of smoke, saying that it has less tar on a per ml basis seems somehow less relevant (to me; YMMV). Beer has less alcohol than whiskey, ml by ml, but if you drink 10,000 ml of beer, you are likely to get pretty drunk.

Fifth, the tar in waterpipe smoke almost certainly differs from that of cigarette smoke, though we are uncertain how it differs. I say it almost certainly does, because the temperature at which cigarette smoke is produced is about 900 degrees C, while waterpipe tobacco (when an individual uses the pipe alone) reaches about 450 degrees C. Lower temperatures produce different smoke constituents, and a full analysis of waterpipe smoke has not been completed (yet). The different content may or may not influence the overall risk of inhaling the smoke.

Finally, and here is the big one, the data that exist right now are almost exclusively about machine-generated smoke content (what I call the "yield" of tar, co, and nicotine), and there is no clear relationship between machine-generated smoke and what a person gets (what I call the "exposure" to tar, co, and nicotine). We need to study human exposure so that we can make more sense of the yield data. By the way, in the one human exposure study I know of (Shafagoj and others, 2000; Shafagoj and Mohammed, 2002), a single waterpipe use episode led to about a 60 ng/ml increase in blood nicotine level (a cigarette usually produces about a 6-10 ng/ml nicotine increase). While some may question these data (from 14 Jordanian men) they are the only data we have, and, at the least, you might say that waterpipe tobacco smoking is *capable* of delivering large nicotine doses.

None of this is to say waterpipe tobacco smoking is safe -- in fact, the existing data suggest that it carries many of the same risks as cigarette smoking. However, I cannot tell you the relative risks of a lifetime of waterpipe use versus a lifetime of cigarette use, because the necessary studies have not been done. I cannot tell you the absolute risk of cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease, or other tobacco-related illness associated with waterpipe use because those studies have not been done (recall that epidemiological studies of cigarette smoking only started getting reported 50-60 years ago). When you consider that, until recently, waterpipe tobacco smoking has been limited to countries that have not devoted resources to large-scale epidemiological study, there is little wonder that we have no hard evidence to point to and say "there -- there is your risk" (I am not judging countries for how they choose to devote scarce resources).

So, to sum up, I thought the Fox report was mostly accurate, but, as with most media reports, it did not provide the qualifiers necessary to interpret the information in context. We don't know much, we need to know more, but what we do know suggests health risks.

[sambookamax]

I just want to say, I hate the fucking media, all they do is try to put fear in people as they spurt diarrhea from their mouths of pure bs...
(this is my opinion...sometimes they get things right, on occasion)

[joetuo]

Maybe a bit off topic, but did you guys see NOVI cafe when they flashed up a bunch of pictures......wasn't there a guy who used to frequent the forums who owned that place?

[The King]

Bottom line, how many cigs would you guess average smoker goes through a day? 1 pack?

How many bowls of shisha would the AVERAGE hookah smoker go through? a few a week? People on this forum smoke more but I'd say on average most people who smoke hookah don't do it every day. People smoke WAY more cigs

[aldonb1]

yeah a lot of my middle eastern friends only smoke like once every other week. Same w/ their parents.... me on the other hand... once a day? once every other day?

(haha and im glad u agreed w/ me Scheetz about fox)

[ASUSEAN1]

Second, "tar" is a smoke constituent, not a tobacco constituent, so there is no "tar" in a box of tobacco (or a pack of cigarettes) but there is "tar" in the smoke produced from waterpipe tobacco and produced by a pack of cigarettes. "Tar" is defined as the "nicotine-free, dry particulate matter" in smoke. Meaning take some smoke, take out all the nicotine and all the water, and whatever you have left is "tar". Thus defined, virtually any smoke has "tar" (unless, I suppose, you were to ignite pharmacologically pure nicotine).

that is what i was trying to get at

[Altron]

Bottom line, how many cigs would you guess average smoker goes through a day? 1 pack?

How many bowls of shisha would the AVERAGE hookah smoker go through? a few a week? People on this forum smoke more but I'd say on average most people who smoke hookah don't do it every day. People smoke WAY more cigs

I smoke cigs everyday and I dont have nearly close to a pack.

Also, sorry about the number mix up, 70% etc...

This is ridiculous because there are so many factors that can change the numbers.

The size of the bowl, the amount of coals used to heat up the shisha, foil compared to glass, the amount of shisha placed into the bowl, the type of shisha itself...

And I'm sure if you are smoking cigs for an hour you could easily topple the numbers of shisha. Cigs also have various things inside of it that contribute to being even worse then regular tobacco.

[Zerodynamic]

wow... that video got me pissed off.

Whats worse is, the stupid waitress they interviewed had almost NO clue what she was talking about. Bunch of bullshit if you ask me.

[The King]

Jesus Fuckin Christ....I just watched this.... 1st of all, that waitress is a dumbass, of course it has nicotine. But the fact that they compare an entire bowl of shisha to a single cig is ridiculous.

Seriously, if you compare anything in a big amount to something small you can say it's worse for you. Like see, water is just as dangerous as liquor, because if you drink a few gallons of water you can drown yourself and die.(it really has happened) and if you drink enough liquor you'll die too.... I mean if they're gonna bother to do a report they could atleast get their shit together...Morons

[djbomberto]

I wonder to myself WHY CARE? its not going to make an impact on our lifes, so Whatgives? False info? well whoopie

[cypherkk]

Don't smoke hookah to live, live to smoke hookah!

[KillZedKill]

Hah I simply think that fi people are worried about there heal;th they shouldnt smoke anything at all. Smoking anything isnt good for you, its SMOKE.

[maramos]

I love how the media always likes to make things seem like huge epidemics. Anyone remmeber thoes jelly bracelets girls wore?

Here is a fairly recent study http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/...full/116/1/e113 , the big points are

carbon monoxide concentrations of 0.34% to 1.40% for water-pipe smoke and 0.41% for cigarette smoke.
The larger concentrations are from small unfiltered (no water?) hookahs. Also I couldn't find any conclusive studies that suggest threre are any significant harmful effects of short term exposure to low concentrations of CO

Using a standard smoking protocol of 100 puffs of 3 seconds' duration in a single smoking session, 2.25 mg of nicotine and 242 mg of nicotine-free dry particulate matter were obtained.
~10x the tar of a cigarette though they suggest the average smoker takes about 10-12 drags of a cigarette so per puff it's about the same, and 1 session could have less or more nicotine depending on the cigarette. Also with all the chemicals they put in cigarettes im sure there is a difference in the levels of carcinogens in the tar.

After a single 45-minute smoking session, the mean plasma concentration of nicotine rose from 1.11 to 60.31 ng/mL
That interested me a little. From studies i saw this is 2-3x that of someone after 1 cigarette, even though the total nicotine content of a session is potentially less. Only thing i could attribute that to is that perhaps the body actually more of the nicotine because of the longer duration.

[web250]

Fun! Let's go spread the FUD some more why don't ya media?

[LilTank13]

I wonder to myself WHY CARE? its not going to make an impact on our lifes, so Whatgives? False info? well whoopie

The reason you should care is the same reason why pit bull owners care. It is something we love, and would hate to see banned, but given the nature of people to take everything ridiculously out of context, and go on false info because *the media said so*, has tremendous potential to be banned. We all know how misunderstood our hobby is, and if more people are wrongly educated by Fox, we all know how things can snow ball. The studies are biased, but unfortunately, our voices are quite a bit smaller than Fox's.