Smoking shisha could be as much as 450 times more harmful than cigarettes, UAE daily the National reported on Sunday, citing a study by Britain’s Centre for Tobacco Control Research.

The study found a half-hour shisha session was the equivalent of smoking four or five cigarettes, the newspaper said.

Shisha smokers had 40 to 70 parts of carbon monoxide per million parts of air (ppm) in their breath, the study showed, while light smokers typically had 10-20 ppm in their breath, the paper said.

Dr Hilary Wareing of the centre said at worst shisha could be 400 to 450 times as bad for an individual as cigarettes.

Maktoob