Smoker's health may suffer due to heat of hookah pipe

Washington: You may want to rethink how you heat up your water pipes as it turns out, the heat of hookah pipe is the biggest health culprit for the smokers.

Chemists at the University of Cincinnati found that hookah tobacco heated electronically kills 70 percent more lung cells than traditional charcoal.

The gooey, flavourful tobacco in hookah pipes is normally burned with specially made charcoal briquettes, which can contain heavy metals or other toxins. But a study found that a popular alternative - electric heating disks sold in most tobacco shops - might be far more harmful to your health.

The study heated the same hookah tobacco with two types of commercially available charcoal and an electric heat source sometimes called e-charcoal.

The researchers found that:

Lower-toxin charcoal killed 10 percent of lung cells after 24 hours.

Higher-toxin charcoal killed 25 percent of lung cells.

E-charcoal killed a whopping 80 percent of lung cells.

"We're never supposed to be surprised in science. I was shocked and excited to open a whole new field of research just based on temperature," said lead author Ryan Saadawi.

For the latest study, the UC researchers compared two types of commercially available charcoal using the same hookah tobacco. A chemical analysis revealed one charcoal contained a higher concentration of heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic and lead than the other.

They subjected lung cells to an extract of the resulting hookah smoke at different dilutions. The sample taken from the lower-toxin charcoal killed about 10 percent of the lung cells after 48 hours. The second sample, which used charcoal laced with heavy metals, killed about 25 percent of the lung cells.

The study has been presented at American Chemical Society 253rd National Meeting & Exposition.