A study shows that using a water pipe more than doubles the risk of dying from cancer compared to non-smokers, a figure higher than that associated with cigarette smoking.
Lung cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, as well as stomach and liver cancers, are significantly more common among hookah smokers than among non-smokers and even cigarette smokers, according to a large prospective study conducted in Vietnam and published in JAMA Oncology.
Researchers from Hanoi Medical University followed the outcomes of more than 39,000 people in the northern part of the country for 10 years, specifically monitoring their use of tobacco in the form of cigarettes or hookah.
Triple Risk for Lung Cancer
Exclusive use of the Vietnamese water pipe more than doubled the risk of dying from cancer compared to non-smokers, a figure higher than that associated with cigarette smoking. This risk was more than tripled in the case of lung cancer and even quadrupled for stomach cancer. This study was conducted in Vietnam, one of the countries with the highest smoking rates in the world, which also maintains a particularly harmful local practice of hookah use.
Indeed, the tobacco used in Vietnam is richer in nicotine and consumed pure, unlike the typical product in Arab countries, which is mixed with molasses. In both cases, a hookah session poses a particularly high risk as it lasts about 40 minutes and corresponds in terms of nicotine to more than a pack of cigarettes.
A Practice Banned in France
Hookah, or narghile, allows many carcinogenic products from the smoke, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, to pass into the lungs because they are not filtered out by passing through water. Vietnamese researchers are therefore calling on their country’s health authorities to take measures to ban it in public places, implement warning labels, and apply taxes similar to those already in place for cigarettes.
Worldwide, the consumption and commercialization of hookah are already banned in some African countries like Mali, Togo, or Senegal due to the risks of cancer, as well as cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases it poses. Since 2006, its use has also been prohibited in France in any enclosed space intended for public use, whether associative or not, except for specially designed smoking rooms limited to 20% of the establishment’s area.
