Careful, cannabis users: Bongs may create more secondhand smoke than cigarettes

In a research certain to kill the thrill at many a celebration, researchers at UC Berkeley say bongs could create extra secondhand smoke than tobacco cigarettes.

The studY, printed Wednesday on the JAMA Community, discovered that smoking hashish in a bong created concentrations of nice particulate matter 4 instances higher than concentrations noticed after smoking a tobacco cigarette or hookah pipe.

“The antagonistic well being results of particulate matter in secondhand tobacco smoke are nicely established, they usually present a context during which we should always see these findings,” stated S. Katharine Hammond, a professor of environmental well being sciences at UC Berkeley and research co-author with graduate researcher Patton Khuu Nguyen.

Hammond stated the research may assist defeat misconceptions that secondhand hashish smoke poses much less danger than secondhand tobacco smoke.

“There’s a frequent misperception amongst younger adults at the very least that secondhand hashish smoke is secure, and this research exhibits that that’s not true,” Hammond stated.

In accordance with the research, 27% of younger adults imagine secondhand publicity to hashish smoke is secure, however “hashish smoke has a number of hundred poisonous chemical compounds, carcinogens, and nice particulate matter, many at larger concentrations than tobacco smoke.”

Earlier analysis has linked secondhand tobacco smoke to most cancers, respiratory illnesses and untimely births, the research stated.

“These issues haven’t translated to hashish bong smoking … whereby smoke is drawn by way of water,” the research stated.

Moreover, concentrations of the particulate matter remained excessive nicely after smoking had ended.

The priority, Hammond stated, is much less for individuals selecting to smoke and extra for others who could ingest the smoke involuntarily.

To carry out the research, researchers measured concentrations of particulate matter in a house earlier than, throughout and after bong-smoking classes of between 90 and 180 minutes with the doorways and home windows closed.

Hammond stated a subsequent step may embody making an attempt to hyperlink secondhand hashish smoke to the illnesses and different maladies linked to secondhand tobacco smoke, though Hammond acknowledged that such research are “tough to do and take a very long time.”

“Establishing individuals’s secondhand smoke publicity historical past is sophisticated,” Hammond stated. “I don’t suppose we have to anticipate that.”

Hammond stated ample info exists concerning the composition of secondhand hashish smoke, which incorporates “most of the similar carcinogens and different poisonous chemical compounds which can be in secondhand tobacco smoke.”