Tobacco on a shisha smoke poses as a serious health risk to the smoker and to other people who are exposed to the smoke emitted by shisha. A shisha smoke contains many toxic that are known to cause a lung cancer, heart disease, tuberculosis and other health complications. Even if it is passed through the water pipes, the smoke contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, heavy metals, and cancer-causing chemicals. Although many shisha smokers believe that this habit is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, but as a matter of fact shisha smoke still contains nicotine and many toxins as cigarette smoke.

In Middle East countries, the outbreak of tuberculosis was linked to smoking shisha. The carbon monoxide from coal is approximately thirty times more difficult to dissolve in water than in oxygen. In a single smoking session, you can inhale up to two hundred times of smoke more than on a cigarette. The more you smoke shisha the higher level of toxins and nicotine you take.

According to the study of the University of California in Berkeley, smoking shisha and cigarette is a major risk factor of tuberculosis (TB). The study asserts that smokers have seventy three percent higher risk of becoming infected by tuberculosis than non-smokers. It is a well known fact that there is a significant association between shisha smoking and tuberculosis.

A recent study states that fifty-six sticks of cigarettes are equal to forty-five minutes session of smoking shisha. In that study, researchers examined the smokers as they smoked shisha for forty-five minutes which is the length of an average shisha smoking session and then the next day the researchers also examined the smokers who smoke cigarette for forty-five minutes. The researchers used pressure sensors to measure how much smoke each person inhaled, and the result is that the cigarette smoking group inhaled 1.1 liter of smoke, while the shisha group inhaled 61.6 liters of smoke.

Thomas Eissenberg, Ph.D., Director of Clinical Behavioral Pharmacology at Virginia Commonwealth University said that “Shisha tobacco contains the addictive drug called nicotine so users run the risk of getting hooked. The more comfortable users are smoking from the pipe, the more smoke they inhale.” The risks don’t stop there either: water pipes are also a carrier of viruses like herpes, hepatitis, and tuberculosis that is according to the study of a Danish researcher.

Regular shisha smokers have lung functions approximately twenty-five percent lower than those who do not smoke shisha. Another study has shown that smoking shisha increases the risk of pulmonary tuberculosis. Shisha smokers should be aware of the fact that when smoke goes through water, humidity in the smoke increases and it then tends to stay for a longer period of time in the lungs. Some germs, mainly bacteria that cause tuberculosis, live in the shisha pipe.

Shisha smoking is increasingly emerging as a significant health risk in Egypt, due to tuberculosis transmission from pipe sharing and uncontrolled manual preparation of shisha pipe. The World Health Organization (WHO) regional office in Cairo estimates that seventeen percent of tuberculosis cases in the Eastern Mediterranean are linked to smoking of shisha. According to the latest World Health Organization statistics in Egypt, thirty-one point six percent in every 100,000 people had tuberculosis in 2005, and the rate of the new tuberculosis cases that year was estimated at 25 per 100,000 people.

The risks or acquiring tuberculosis outweighs the pleasures from smoking shisha; so it is better to stay off shisha smoking rather than a lifelong hardship of a dreaded disease.

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Cancer and harms caused by Shisha are innumerable. Many smokers enjoy the habit quite oblivious of the fact that smoking of Shisha may be more dangerous to human health than cigarette. While Shisha has a pleasant flavor and does not burn during the smoking process, there is no guarantee of an entirely harmless experience for its addicts. This type of ignorance is quite worrying among parents, health safety authorities and other stakeholders, with everyone wondering if Shisha smokers can begin to acknowledge the bitter fact that their habit posses no ‘light’ health risks as compared to hazardous effects of cigarette smoking.

Already, medical experts have raised the red flag over cancer and harms caused by Shisha. The experts have issued stern warning to the effect that Shisha poses more perilous effects than cigarette smoking! As such, if you have been using Shisha under the unfounded impression that the tobacco in it presents herbal benefits and is harmless to the human health, it is high time you took a hard look at the substance. It is high time you dropped the habit before you suffered irreversible harmful effects of Shisha.

If you are new to the practice, you can trust the fact that most of your friends will never discuss cancer and harms caused by Shisha, if they love it. Thus, you have to consider the opinion of health experts as well as mature members of the society. Already, Shisha smoking has began to irritate residents of buildings that house shops and other outlets that serve Shisha, for numerous problems the habit presents to the environment. In some quarters, there is already a sense of panic with people calling on authorities to put in place measures to curb the use of Shisha. You clearly do not want to be on the wrong side of your society’s acceptable practices and conventions.

At the same time, medical experts have shown links between Shisha smoking and lung cancer. To make matters worse, the various pleasant flavors in Shisha mislead users into thinking that they are smoking herbs as opposed to tobacco. This makes it very easy for large amounts of nicotine to enter a Shisha smoker’s system without him or her realizing it. With time, the user becomes very addicted to nicotine and more exposed to cancerous effects on his or her health. Government officials in some regions have expressed disappointment over the difficulty in working out the amount of nicotine in Shisha due to differences in packing.

Additionally, a discussion of cancer and harms caused by Shisha would be inconclusive without the mention of the aluminium foil that may cause cancer. During the smoking of Shisha, the aluminium foil in it comes into reaction with the burning charcoal, which in turn produces carcinogenic aluminium fumes. In other words, the foils can cause cancer!

In the same vein, Shisha smoking poses a higher risk of inhaling hazardous carbon dioxide. Health experts believe that a single puff of Shisha is equivalent to 10 of cigarettes, depending on the packed ingredients. This makes Shisha more dangerous than cigarettes.

Speaking about harmful effects of Shisha smoking, health experts warn that humid smoke in a hookah or Shisha pipe stays in the lungs for a longer time. The Shisha pipe is in itself a perfect thriving environment for some germs, specifically bacteria that cause tuberculosis.

Besides tuberculosis, the Shisha pipe can act like a perfect medium for transmission of diseases that are highly infectious such as Hepatitis A. When multiple smokers share a hookah, they are at a higher risk of contracting highly contagious diseases. Since most Shisha smokers practice their addiction in groups, the risk of infection with tuberculosis is as high as the tendency to share the Shisha pipe.

On top of cancer and harms caused by Shisha, respectable members of different societies are already lamenting the distortion of their beautiful residential areas and shopping centres by outlets that serve the Shisha. The habit has become a significant ‘thief of time’ for the elegant as well as educated young members of the society.

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