A new study has found that one hookah smoking session delivers 25 times the amount of tar of a single cigarette.
It also delivers 125 times the smoke, 2.5 times the nicotine, and 10 times the carbon monoxide.
“Our results show that hookah tobacco smoking poses real health concerns and that it should be monitored more closely than it is currently,” said lead author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt’s Schools of the Health Sciences, in the study announcement.
The finds were drawn when the researchers did a meta-analysis, or a mathematical summary of previously published data, of 542 scientific articles potentially relevant to cigarette and hookah smoking. Seventeen of these studies were ultimately utilized for the analysis.
“A strength of meta-analysis is that it enables us to provide more precise estimates by synthesizing the currently available data from individual studies,” said co-author and expert in meta-analysis Smita Nayak, M.D., research scientist at the Swedish Center for Clinical Research and Innovation.
