University junior Shayna Brown occasionally puffs tobacco from a hookah with friends.
She first smoked shisha, hookah tobacco, while visiting Israel a few years ago, and she doesn’t think her sporadic, strictly social use of the Indian water pipe has health risks, she said.
A recently released Georgetown University study, however, suggests that a 30- 60-minute hookah session can pose dramatic health hazards, mirroring warnings from public health officials about the similar effects of smoking shisha and cigarettes.
Christopher Loffredo, director of the Cancer Genetics and Epidemiology program at Georgetown University Medical Center, who led the study, compares a typical water pipe session to inhaling a pack of cigarettes.
Hookahs, pipes that draw smoke from flavored-tobacco coals through water, cooling it before it enters the lungs, have gained popularity in the U.S. in recent years after success in the Middle East and elsewhere.
His study, one of the first researching the health effects of hookah smoking, analyzes an emerging trend of hookah lounges nationwide, particularly in college towns. The myth that smoking hookah is less harmful than other forms of tobacco disproportionately affects college-aged women who fear the social stigma of lighting up a cigarette and opt to smoke a hookah instead, the study says.
“There hasn’t been a lot of research done in the U.S. because it’s a new phenomenon,” said Paula Staight, University Health Center health education director.
Some people believe smoking hookah is less harmful than cigarettes, but health experts dispute that claim.
People think water absorbs all toxins, but tar, the carcinogen found in tobacco, is not water-soluble, Staight said.
“I think there’s been an attempt to make it seem less harmful,” said Laura Hammond, Lane County Public Health tobacco prevention and education program coordinator. “It’s another way to lure people in.”
The tobacco industry cannot market to anyone under 18 years of age, so 18 to 24 year olds are a major target, Staight said.
Hunky Dory Pipe and Tobacco assistant manager Aleena Schlotzhauer said the local store, whose largest customer base is young, college-aged individuals, sells nearly 25 different flavors of shisha and sometimes sells out of its stock of hookahs.
The store has a hookah lounge and rents hookah for $15 an hour.
Schlotzhauer said she thinks smoking hookah is “definitely” better health-wise than smoking cigarettes because “there’s only five percent tar and no nicotine. That’s very, very little.”
“Most other tobaccos are dry in cigarettes,” she said. “Shisha has a molasses or honey base. It’s almost like vaporizing when you’re using coals to burn it.”
Local health experts counter the claim that shisha doesn’t have nicotine and say it is a “total myth” that water pipes are safer because they allow smokers to inhale more tobacco.
“The tobacco leaf contains five percent nicotine,” Hammond said. “Nicotine is inherent in the tobacco plant.”
Regardless of the nicotine level, students are playing with an addictive substance, and tar is the cancer-causing agent, Staight said.
“You are still exposed to all of the carcinogens,” she said. “It’s not safe.”
A 2005 review of studies about the effects of smoking hookah published in the journal Pediatrics also found evidence of cancer risks from hookah smoke. It states that passing the hookah tube among users could pose a risk of spreading diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.
Several University Facebook groups exist for students who enjoy smoking hookah, including “Hookah Lovers,” which has 69 members.
University freshman Margaret Dixon-McDonald began smoking hookah when she entered college three months ago.
She smokes twice a month and thinks the harms compare equally to smoking cigarettes, she said.
“I think that in both situations, it depends more on the frequency and duration in which the hookah or cigarette is smoked,” Dixon-McDonald said.
Several types of cancer have been linked to hookah smoking, and “tobacco cannot be considered safe in any amount or form,” according to the American Cancer Society.
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