The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) has urged people to avoid smoking hookah, saying is not a healthier alternative to cigarettes.
Citing the University and Technical and Vocational School Student Health and Tobacco Use Survey, the HPA said 1.8 percent of youths used hookah in 2018, a demographic that increased to 3.6 percent two years after that and 5 percent last year.
Taiwanese are relatively ill-informed about the dangers of smoking hookah, and a lot of misinformation about hookah is being circulated, HPA Tobacco Control Division head Lo Su-ying (羅素英) said.
Photo: Taipei Times
The water in a hookah pipe does not function as a filter for nicotine, and there is no evidence that hookah causes less harm to a person’s health than cigarettes or other forms of nicotine use, she said.
Hookah pipes use charcoal or woodchips as fuel to heat tobacco and their fumes contain metal elements, large quantities of carbon monoxide and other carcinogens, she said, citing the WHO.
Smoking hookah for one hour is equivalent to inhaling the same volume of fumes from smoking 100 to 200 cigarettes, she added.
Hookah users are exposed to environments polluted by toxic substances and carcinogens, which increases the risk of acute and chronic diseases affecting the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, she said.
Smoke from a hookah is harmful to newborn babies and pregnant women’s health, while using it at social gatherings could increase the risk of spreading infectious diseases due to the shared use of a pipe’s mouthpiece and hose, Lo said.
“Hookah smoking is a curiosity that I would not recommend the public to indulge,” she said.
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