Hookahs More Dangerous Than Cigarettes? More Tar, Nicotine & Carbon Monoxide Found

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Are you a fan of smoking hookahs? A recent study reveals that hookahs may be just as bad, and even more toxic, than cigarettes.

According to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, one session using a hookah delivers 125 times more smoke, 2.5 times more nicotine and 10 times more carbon monoxide than a stick of cigarette. Eureka Alert notes that the findings were a result of a meta-analysis of 17 past studies, which were chosen from 542 scientific papers about cigarette and hookah smoking.

The study's lead author, Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt’s Schools of the Health Sciences, said, "Our results show that hookah tobacco smoking poses real health concerns and that it should be monitored more closely than it is currently. "For example, hookah smoking was not included in the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey System questionnaire, which assesses cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco, electronic cigarettes and many other forms of substance abuse."

Primack further says that paralleling one hookah session to one cigarette may not be a "perfect comparison" and does not exactly say which of the two is "worse." Both items are hard to compare as there is a difference between the frequency and patterns of individuals using them. However, he said that the findings ultimately show that "hookah smokers are exposed to a lot more toxicants than they probably realize."

This study is relevant as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported April last year that more and more people are using tobacco, especially among middle and high school students. The report said that from 2011 to 2014, the number of middle and high school students using hookahs and e-cigarettes rose while those using cigarettes, tobacco pipes, cigars, etc., decreased. The number tripled from 660,600 (4.5 percent) to two million (13.4 percent) high school students and 770,000 (5.2 percent) to 1.3 million (9.4 percent) middle school students from 2013 to 2014 respectively.

Smita Nayak, M.D., co-author and meta-analyst research scientists at the Swedish Center for Clinical Research and Innovation, explained how the findings of the study is vital.

"Individual studies have reported different estimates for inhaled toxicants from cigarettes or hookahs, which made it hard to know exactly what to report to policy makers or in educational materials. A strength of meta-analysis is that it enables us to provide more precise estimates by synthesizing the currently available data from individual studies," Nayak said.