Smoking cigarettes is known to kill an estimated more than 450,000 people in the United States, but smokers of hookah, also known as waterpipe and shisha, may also exposed to the risk of injury, disease, cancer, and other tobacco-related injuries.

Hookah is the traditional Middle Eastern water pipe that goes by different names, including but not limited to shisha, kalyan, narghile, goza, and many more. An estimated more than 100 million people worldwide smoke hookah every single day.

“Unfortunately, many of those who smoke water pipes every day or frequently on a weekly or monthly basis perceive hookah smoking as a less harmful alternative to smoking cigarettes, which is nothing but a myth,” says our Philadelphia waterpipe and hookah smoking injury attorney at Dan Doyle Law Group.

Dangers of waterpipe and hookah smoking

While many of these regular water pipe smokers wrongly believe that hookah smoking is harmless because of the use of water as filtration and the use of fruit-flavored tobacco products, scientists agree that smoking water pipes may be just as dangerous as smoking regular cigarettes. In fact, some studies argue that smoking hookah is much more dangerous than smoking cigarettes.

The problem is that hookah smokers are not the only ones exposed to the risk of injury or disease caused by smoking water pipes. Those who inhale the second-hand smoke are just as likely to be harmed. For example, during a typical 1-hour-long hookah smoking session, the smoker inhales between 100 and 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from one cigarette.

Even if you do not smoke hookah but sit near someone smoking a water pipe in a bar, restaurant, café, hookah bar, or any other establishment, you are also exposed to tremendous amounts of nicotine, carbon monoxide and certain other toxins.

Smoking hookah may be more harmful than smoking cigarettes

“Unfortunately, however, seeking compensation for your hookah-related injury is not easy, and in many cases, even impossible, because as with smoking cigarettes, your injury or disease is developed over time, which makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint the liable parties,” explains our experienced defective product attorney.

Hookah smoking can be just as harmful or even more dangerous compared to smoking cigarettes for a variety of reasons:

  • As we have mentioned earlier, a hookah smoker inhales between 100 and 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from one cigarette during a typical 1-hour-long smoking session
  • Hookah smoking delivers the addictive drug nicotine, which can be just as toxic and dangerous as cigarette smoke
  • Throughout the smoking session, a smoker absorbs higher concentrations of the toxins compared to cigarette smoking due to the length of the smoking session as well as the depth of inhalation
  • Hookah smokers are just as likely to develop various forms of cancer, including oral cancer, lung cancer, stomach cancer, as well as reduced lung function and diminished fertility, among other diseases and illnesses
  • Since water pipes are often smoked in a social setting, with several people sharing the same pipe or even the same mouthpiece, hookah smoking can also transmit many infections and viruses, including but not limited to herpes, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and many more
  • Even though tobacco used to make hookah is fruit-flavored, water pipe smoke contains many of the same known toxins found in cigarettes, including but not limited to nicotine, carbon monoxide, tar, formaldehyde and other volatile aldehydes, heavy metals such as lead, copper, zinc, and many more

Seeking compensation for a tobacco-related injury

Getting a waterpipe or hookah injury can be associated with life-long medical treatment, and you can only imagine the financial cost of treating such serious tobacco-related injuries as cancer.

It is true that you may be able to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars as compensation for your hookah-related injury, but recovering damages for water pipe smoking injuries is not that easy even though you do have legal rights.

More often than not, you need a Philadelphia hookah smoking injury lawyer to determine the value of your tobacco-related injury, establish fault, as well as determine whether or not you have a valid personal injury, wrongful death, premises liability, or product liability case.

If you or your loved one has been harmed by first-hand or second-hand smoke from waterpipes or hookah, you may be entitled to seek compensation. Schedule a free consultation with our lawyers at Dan Doyle Law Group to discuss your situation.