Hookah Pipe Risks

When it comes to smoking, the good news is that cigarette smoking is on the decline, the bad news is that more people are using a hookah pipe, but what they don’t know about them could cause major health problems.

College students in particular are starting to pick up the hookah pipe habit.

If you’re not familiar with a hookah pipe, it’s a type of water pipe used for centuries mostly in the Middle East. It uses a tobacco blend, with flavors added. And since the smoke passes through water before it’s inhaled, some think it isn’t all that bad for you.

WRONG! As I’ve said before, tobacco is tobacco is tobacco, no matter how you smoke it. In the case of a hookah pipe the water does nothing to stop the cancer causing parts of tobacco from getting in your lungs. To make matters even worse, since hookah sessions typically last an hour or so, you are getting up to 100 times more tobacco in your lungs than you would from just one cigarette. But even if you only hang out in a hookah lounge, but don’t smoke, you still can’t escape. Although you might not be smoking, you are inhaling an amazing amount of second hand smoke. And now we know that second hand smoke by itself can cause cancer.

Hopefully this fad will fade quickly as more people, and especially college students, realize what most experts say, that smoking is smoking no matter how you do it.