Hookah pipe smoking among health sciences students

Waterpipe and Cigarette Smoking among University Students in the Western Cape, South Africa

“…Previous South African studies were limited in scope (eg, focusing only on health sciences students in one or 2 universities, 5,12 or high school pupils at one high school 13 ). The present study considers students from all faculties at 4 universities.…”

“…4 A number of studies have investigated waterpipe prevalence in South Africa. Three studies consider waterpipe smoking prevalence among health sciences students at the University of Cape Town, 12 2 universities in Pretoria, 5 and a university in the Western Cape. 6 A fourth considers waterpipe smoking among grade 10 (typically age 16) learners in a disadvantaged community in Johannesburg.…”

Poor Knowledge of the Harmful Effects of Shisha Among Shisha Smokers: Findings from a Preliminary Survey in Northwest Nigeria

“…The majority of the inhabitants of the town were Muslims and of the Hausa-Fulani tribe [14]. The study instrument was a paper questionnaire developed from literatures on tobacco smoking practices [12,15,16,[17][18][19][20][21][22]. The questionnaire had four sections -consent form, demographic section, section exploring shisha smoking history, and a section assessing knowledge of harms associated with shisha smoking.…”

“…In fact, the prevalence of shisha smoking is on the rising side [17]. Interestingly, peer infl uence, parental infl uence, socio-cultural acceptance of shisha smoking behavior are factors implicated in the migration of more and more people, who were previously non-smokers of shisha, to the pool of shisha smokers [15]. Shisha smoke is rich in fl avored tobacco, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile aldehydes (such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, propionaldehyde, and methacrolein), carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, nicotine, furans, and nanoparticles [16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…Also, through the sharing of the mouthpiece of shisha, infections such as hepatitis B, tuberculosis can be transmitted [18]. Unfortunately, many shisha smokers wrongly perceived shisha smoke to have little to no risk compared to cigarette smoking; hence, making so many shisha smokers to have a wrong feeling of being spared from the health problems associated with cigarette use [8,15,22,23]. However, only few published studies on shisha had ever been conducted among Nigerian population groups and out of these few, only scanty information were provided on the knowledge of health risks associated with shisha smoking among shisha smokers [12,24]; this shows the imperative need to explore the knowledge of the general public on the health hazards associated with this kind of smoking behavior.…”