Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’

Posted on 25th August, 2009 by

BBC NEWS | Health | Shisha ‘as harmful as cigarettes’

Why does anyone assume that shisha is less harmful than smoking cigarettes? Becuase it’s such a “cultural” experience, or because the smell of shisha is much less obnoxious than that of cigarette smoke, perhaps? However, tobacco is still tobacco regardless of whether you use a fancy pipe or a roll-up.

A recent study by the UK Department of Health and the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre has found that shisha smokers have more carbon monoxide in their blood than light or heavy smokers of cigarettes, affecting between 8 and 12% of their blood. You might also like to consider what you might be picking up when you share a shisha pipe, as made clear in this report.

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  • http://imuslim.tv iMuslim

    I think most people are scared by smoking ciggies due to the associated risk of developing lung, and other deadly cancers. I am not sure a higher than normal carbon monoxide content in one’s blood will be enough to deter people from shisha, unfortunately - unless they are pregnant, as lower levels of oxygen in the mother’s blood would be harmful to the fetus.

    I don’t know of any studies conducted on assessing the carcinogenicity of ‘scented tobacco’ but I can’t imagine it would be any less than regular tobacco.

  • http://suspectpaki.com Shahid

    It doesn’t take a scientist to work out the obvious differences, but tobacco content in shisha “tobacco” is very small. Most of the content is molasses. Further, the smoke is passed through a very long pipe, much of what little tar is produced by shisha smoke is collected in the pipe and of course, most of the harmful substances are filtered by the water.

    It’s not actually “scented tobacco”, it’s molasses, with a small amount of tobacco.

    People tend to smoke many cigarettes a day. Shisha is not something you can just spark up whenever you want.

    Inhalation patterns are different too, so a typical shisha might be smoked for a longer period, but with fewer per-minute inhalations of a larger quantity of less harmful smoke.

    This attack on shisha is yet another piece of fascist nonsense. Comparing apples with oranges makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, do a proper study on the health risks associated with smoking shisha, and do it double-blind, over several decades, with thousands of subjects.

  • http://suspectpaki.com Shahid

    Further, the risible report points only at carbon monoxide levels, not tar or nicotine, both of which are the real culprits. (Many people don’t actually inhale shisha smoke either, though I accept that more and more people do)

  • http://theislamawareness.blogspot.com/ Zafar

    Another related thing are incense sticks. So many Muslims use it in their house but they are as harmful if not more then cigarettes. The worst thing is that people think its religious without any mention of these in any religious texts.