An alarming new study has revealed the US young adults believe that hookahs and electronic cigarettes are safer than traditional cigarettes.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) informs hookahs (also referred to as waterpipes) are the most dangerous tobacco products of them all.
According to the organization, those who smoke traditional cigarettes puff between eight (8) and 12 times during a session of five (5) to seven (7) minutes. What this means is that they inhale somewhere in the range of 0.5 and 0.6 liters of smoke over the course of a session.
Hookah sessions, on the other hand, typically last anywhere between 20 and 80 minutes, meaning that hookah users puff somewhere in the range of 50 to 200 times over the course of a session. The World Health Organization said that this is basically the equivalent of consuming at least 100 traditional cigarettes.
The exact statement reads as follows: “The waterpipe smoker may therefore inhale as much smoke during one session as a cigarette smoker would inhale consuming 100 or more cigarettes”.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have a worrisome statistic of their own. CDC researchers have found that somewhere between 22 percent (22%) and 40 percent (40%) of US college students are hookah users.
These products are becoming increasingly popular among young adults because manufacturers are starting to disguise the taste of tobacco using generally beloved flavors like bubble gum or green apple. This sometimes causes the nation’s youth to either forget or deliberately ignore the negative effects that tobacco products have on the body.
But these flavoring chemicals are not necessarily safe either. While they are also used in the food industry, and thus labeled safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), fact is they are well known respiratory irritants. This has led some field experts to theorize that flavoring chemicals are only dangerous when inhaled, not when ingested.
The new study focused on the perception that young people have of modern tobacco products, and how they compare to traditional cigarettes.
The study had 2.800 subjects with the age between 18 and 34, smokers as well as non-smokers.
When the research team asked them what they though of hookahs, 32.7 percent (32.7%) of the participating subjects in the 18 to 24 age group, and 18.5 percent (18.5%) of the participating subjects in the 24 and 35 age group, answered that hookahs are not as dangerous as traditional cigarettes.
The problem is that they did not consider them more dangerous, but less dangerous.
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