Many think of hookah smoking as an innocent activity. Often practiced in restaurants, coffee bars, or other kinds of businesses, it is a fairly harmless thing to do. The tobacco used in hookah smoking even comes in a variety of fruit flavors, making it seem all the more harmless.
But whether it seems like it or not, hookah smoking is still smoking. And smoking is never a good idea.
As Rankin (2011) wrote in a recent Texas Dental Journal article, “At the environmental level, side stream (second hand) smoke from a single hookah session contains approximately four times the carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, four times the volatile aldehydes, and thirty times the carbon monoxide of a single cigarette. Exhaled mainstream smoke from a typical one-hour hookah session generate ambient carcinogens and toxicants equivalent to two to ten cigarette smokers” (p. 441-445).
