Relaxing pastime or health hazard?
What is a shisha?
Shisha or sheesha may refer to hookah, a water pipe; mu’assel, shisha tobacco, narghile or hubble bubble. It is an instrument for smoking tobacco through a bowl with a hose or tube attached. The tube has a mouthpiece that the smoker uses to breathe in the smoke. The base can have multiple hoses attached, turning smoking shisha into a social activity.
The shisha contains tobacco which is sometimes mixed with fruit or molasses. Popular flavours include apple, strawberry, mint and cola. Wood, coal or charcoal is burned in the shisha pipe to heat the tobacco and create the smoke.
Smoking using a shisha is a common past time in Arab culture. It is still mainly the men who smoke shisha; however, some women also do so now. While smoking shisha, Arabs usually talk about their favourite subjects with friends in order to relax. The average shisha-smoking session lasts about an hour.
What are the risks?
Shisha often contains the same type of tobacco as you get in cigarettes. Therefore, shisha smokers are at risk of developing the same health problems as cigarette smokers such as cancer, heart disease and lung disease. Because shisha can contain nicotine (the addictive ingredient in cigarettes) you can become addicted to smoking shisha.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a one hour session of smoking shisha can be the equivalent to smoking 100 cigarettes. Shisha smokers often inhale more smoke than cigarette smokers because of the length of time of a shisha session. The WHO report also claims that even after it has passed through water, shisha tobacco smoke still contains high levels of cancer-causing chemicals.
Shisha smoke can contain:
- Up to 36 times more carcinogenic tar than cigarette smoke
- Up to 15 times more carbon monoxide
- Higher levels of lead, nickel and arsenic
- Hydrogen cyanide
- Nicotine
- Many other potent carcinogens.
If the shisha pipe is not properly cleaned, sharing it with others can increase the risk of tuberculosis, hepatitis, meningitis and other infectious diseases.
Since smoking shisha involves smoking for a longer period of time and inhaling higher levels of toxins, there can be little doubt that smoking shisha is at least as dangerous as smoking cigarettes.
