Environmental Toxins: Smoking Hookah is Trendy, Unhealthy

The use of hookah has begun to reemerge in younger Americans. The colorful Middle Eastern water pipe shows up in restaurants, bars, clubs, and lounges throughout the country, especially where anti-smoking laws are not very strict. Health experts are alarmed by the re-association of tobacco with cool. Scott Graber, sales manager for Hookah & Shisha Central, says that "a new hookah lounge opens up every day."

New generation takes up an old habit

Hicham Elmadi, a Georgia hookah bar sommelier, blends tobaccos to capture the customer's mood and personally lights each portion of tobacco with a drag on the hose. He places the tobacco in a clay bowl at the top of the hookah, where the smoke filters through a piece of charcoal and travels down the shaft of the hookah through the water in the bowl, which bubbles. The smoke is cooled by the water and then travels back up and out the hose. Though the tobacco is flavored, thus giving a false sense of security to users, it still is tobacco. June Deen of the American Lung Association of Georgia says that "We're concerned about the false impression that this is a safer form of smoking. In fact, people who engage in smoking hookahs spend a longer time smoking than someone who would smoke a cigarette, yet it has the same toxins associated with other nicotine use."