Biomarkers & Prevention •

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Individuals who go to hookah parlors register larger amounts in their body of benzene — a substance linked with an increased risk for leukemia, whether they smoke or not, as indicated by the results of a study reported Friday by San Diego State University.

The study is published in the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention – a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The researchers found that a benzene metabolite in the smokers’ urine who go to hookah parlors was 4 times higher than usual. It was twofold the ordinary amount for nonsmokers who went to hookah parlors.

Nada Kassem, the associate director at the Center for Behavioral Epidemiology and Community Health at SDSU said, “Hookah smoking involves the use of burning charcoal that is required to heat the hookah tobacco to produce the smoke that the smoker breathes in.”

“Besides inhaling toxicants and cancer-causing agents found in the hookah tobacco smoke, hookah smokers and nonsmokers who hang out with hookah smokers also breathe in substantial amounts of charcoal combustion-generated toxic and carcinogenic emissions,” Kassem said.

For the study, Kassem along with fellow colleagues examined levels of the metabolite, S-phenylmercapturic acid, in the urine of 105 hookah smokers and 103 nonsmokers. They acquired urine samples the morning of and the morning after members went to hookah parlor or attended a smoking event at a private home.

The scientists found that S-phenylmercapturic acid levels were also considerably higher in hookah smokers after going to the private home event.

Kassem said the results demonstrate that smoking hookah is no more secure than other sorts of tobacco smoking — and that regulations ought to reflect that reality.

“As opposed to what is believed, hookah tobacco smoking is not a safe substitute to smoking other forms of tobacco,” Kassem said. “Since there is no sheltered level of exposure to benzene, our results call for intercessions to lessen or stop hookah tobacco use, regulatory actions to cut off hookah-related exposure to toxicants including benzene, and incorporate hookah smoking in clean indoor air enactment.”

According to the recent study, non-smoking individuals who sit in cars with people who smoke, inhale some of the same cancer-causing substances along with other harmful toxins.

However, it isn’t obvious what this signifies for the health of non-smokers, the scientists stated.

Dr. Neal Benowitz, study senior investigator and a of medicine and bio-engineering and therapeutic sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a university news release, “This seems to be the first ever research to determine contact to these harmful toxins in people exposed to secondhand smoke.”

He further added, “This signifies that while sitting in cars with people who smoke, non-smokers inhale a number of potentially harmful compounds from cigarettes, which are linked with cancer, cardiovascular disease and lung disease.”

For this study, the scientists examined the urine of 14 individuals who sat in the back seat of the parked vehicle while the driver smoked three cigarettes over an hour or so. The vehicle windows were open about 4 inches.

Benowitz said in the news release that the urine tests showed that the non-smokers blood contains high level of several harmful toxins “believed to be the most vital amongst 1000s in tobacco smoke that cause smoke-related disease.”

Gideon St. Helen, the lead author of the study said, “This informs us that individuals, especially children and grown ups with pre-existing health problems such as asthma or cardiovascular disease, ought to be protected against secondhand smoke exposure in cars.”

However, the study author added, that cars were not moving, so we are not obvious that what will happen when cars move and air flow could draw out the smoke.

St. Helen stated, “Nevertheless, the air samples we took were similar in makeup to those seen in previous smoking studies that used closed cars and cars with different ventilation systems in operation. And thus we feel that the general levels of risk to non-smokers that we present is realistic.”

The study is published in issue of Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, on 14^th Novemeber.

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