If you must smoke, take your butt outside!

I got an email from CANSA at 1.30am (why? WHY?) and I thought I’d share their message with you guys. It’s about hookah pipes/okka/hubbly bubbly.

The waterpipe was invented in India during the 16th century by a physician named Hakim Abul Fath, who suggested that smoke “should be passed through a small receptacle of water so that it would be rendered harmless.”

Contrary to this ancient lore and today’s popular belief, the smoke that emerges from a waterpipe contains numerous toxins known to cause lung cancer, heart disease and other diseases.

The popularity of waterpipe smoking appears to be stimulated by the unfounded assumptions of relative safety compared to cigarettes. In reality, a water pipe smoking session may expose the smoker to more smoke over a longer period of time than occurs when smoking a cigarette.

Cigarette smokers typically take 8 – 12, 40-47 ml puffs over 5-7 minutes and inhale 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke. In contrast, water pipe smoking sessions typically the last 20-80 minutes, during which the smoker may take 50-200 puffs which range from about 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each. The water pipe smoker may therefore inhale as much smoke during one session as a cigarette smoker would inhale when smoking a 100 or more cigarettes.

So basically:

• Using a waterpipe to smoke tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking.
• A typical 1-hour long waterpipe smoking session involves inhaling 100 – 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette.
• Even after the smoke has passed through the water, it still contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, metals and cancer causing chemicals.
• There is no proof that any device or accessory can make waterpipe smoking safer.

Also another very important message. About people who smoke around you:

Breathing in other people's smoke can cause cancer. Second-hand smoke can cause other health problems too, including heart disease, stroke and breathing problems.

A non-smoker sitting in a smoke filled room for 8 hours will breathe as many cancer-causing chemicals as if he or she had smoked 36 cigarettes. Tobacco and second hand smoke contain over 4 500 chemicals.

Smoke from the burning end of a cigarette has more poisons than smoke inhaled by the smoker. Some of these poisons include acetone (in paint stripper), naphthalene (in mothballs), butane (in lighter fluid), arsenic (in ant poison), ammonia (in toilet cleaner), phenol (in disinfectant) and carbon monoxide (in exhaust fumes).

I feel sick just reading all of this!!! Take care of yourselves, you only get one chance.