The University Of Pittsburgh recently conducted a study that concluded smoking hookah was way worse for you than smoking cigarettes. Using data comprised from 17 previous studies, the researchers discovered that compared to smoking one cigarette, a hookah session has 125 times the smoke, 2.5 times the nicotine, 25 times the tar and 10 times as much carbon monoxide.

However, they were also keen to stress that it’s very difficult to determine which method of smoking is actually worse for you as the two are smoked in different ways – a hookah is much more likely to be shared during the session between multiple people and probably only used once or twice a day at the most, whereas a heavy smoked could easily smoke 20 cigarettes a day.

Featured Image VIA

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Lead investigator Brian A. Primack had the following to say:

Our results show that hookah tobacco smoking poses real health concerns and that it should be monitored more closely than it is currently.

What (the studies) do suggest is that hookah smokers are exposed to a lot more toxicants than they probably realize. After we have more fine-grained data about usage frequencies and patterns, we will be able to combine those data with these findings and get a better sense of relative overall toxicant load.

The research came on the back of the Centre Of Disease Control And Prevention over in America finding that hookahs were more popular among teenagers than cigarettes recently, as were electronic cigarettes. They hoped that their findings would deter teenagers from thinking that hookahs were a safe alternative to smoking – there basically isn’t a safe alternative to smoking and you should just stop now.

If you need any convincing, check out these five reasons why smoking isn’t cool in the slightest.