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Hubbly Bubbly
| Date: |
15 March 2010 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Kate Barry
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| Presenter: |
Devi Sankaree Govender
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Groups of young people smoking the hookah pipe or hubbly bubbly has become a common sight in South Africa. A burning coal is placed on top of flavoured tobacco and the smoke is then filtered through water, before being inhaled through a plastic pipe.
Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche Medical presenter): 'Like cigarettes, hubbly bubbly smoking knows no boundaries. It has become the in-thing for young people in restaurants, pubs, house parties, [on] street corners, both in suburbs and in townships across South Africa.'
In Riverlea, Johannesburg, there's a surprisingly high rate of smoking according to a recent study by the Medical Research Council.
Prof Angela Mathee (Medical Research Council): 'Just about every second or third street corner there was a group of people of all ages smoking these hookah pipes. The youngest child we saw was two years of age, smoking a hookah pipe with his mother. When we spoke to her, she had absolutely no notion that it might be harming her child. She, in fact, thought the opposite was true - that it is good for his lungs, strengthens his lungs, improves respiratory health, prevents asthma...those [are] the kinds of things she was saying.'
Professor Angela Mathee is co-author of the study which will be published in the South African Medical Journal. She found many myths and misconceptions about hubbly bubblies.
Prof Mathee: 'One young man, for example, showed us the package and said, 'See, it says cherry on here. We are not smoking tobacco, we are smoking cherries. And everyone knows that cherries and other fruit is good for you.''
Of the 200 children they interviewed, 60% smoked hubbly bubbly.
Prof Mathee: 'Amongst groups of children of about seven, eight, 12 years of age, where they couldn't afford to buy a hookah pipe, they were using plastic juice bottles and straws. And to make their own hookah pipes as long [as] they had the discarded internal device. They would then just adapt and engineer their own.'
24-year-old Clifford Ngakane has been smoking hubbly bubbly for six years. He also believed it was harmless, until he read a pamphlet distributed by the MRC.
Clifford Ngakane: 'After that pamphlet I really tried quitting, but then it is difficult because the group that I am in, we smoke on a daily basis; so for me not to do that is to cut aside from my friends. So I'm with my friends daily. When I come from work I catch up with friends and we smoke hookah.'
Devi: 'How many hours do you smoke at a time?'
Clifford: 'One-and-a-half hours, two hours max.'
Prof Mathee: 'A cigarette, on average, will take you seven minutes to smoke. A hookah pipe you can smoke for an hour, two hours - and that's the same as smoking a pack or two, or a hundred cigarettes in one go.'
What's more, the pipe that smokers use is plastic and non-porous, so none of the carbon monoxide is allowed to escape. A recent study in the South African Medical Journal measured levels of carbon monoxide in the blood. Five minutes after smoking, carbon monoxide increased by 40% in cigarette smokers, and by 482% in hubbly smokers.
Prof Mathee: 'And so the volume of carbon monoxide that you take in is huge. And of course carbon monoxide is the same thing you use when you want to commit suicide. You attach a hosepipe to your car's exhaust system and you sit in the car and it is the carbon monoxide that kills you.'
We conducted our own tests at Envirocon Instrumentation, using a portable gas analyser from Japan.
We asked a seasoned cigarette smoker to blow a mouthful of cigarette smoke into a bag. This was then extracted by the machine and showed a sulphur dioxide, or SO2 reading of 6.6 parts per million and a carbon monoxide or CO reading of 300.
We then asked a young hubbly smoker to do the same thing. A bagful of hubbly smoke was attached to the machine and the results were dramatic. The digits continued climbing until the CO levels were out of range - over the limit of 500 - and the Sulphur Dioxide level was 10 parts per million.
Dr Yussuf Saloojee (Executive Director: National Council Against Smoking): 'It's got nicotine in it. It has got carbon monoxide, which is a poison [and] which comes out of motor car exhausts. It has got things like arsenic, which is used as a rat poison. It has got lead. It has got chromium. So it has got most of the dangerous chemicals in tobacco smoke and, as a result, people who use hookahs can get almost all the same diseases that you get from smoking cigarettes.'
Dr Yussuf Saloojee is the executive director of the National Council Against Smoking. He spelt out what those diseases are.
Dr Saloojee: 'A person who uses hookah is at increased risk of getting lung cancer, increased risk of getting bladder cancer and mouth cancers. The same cancers are also caused by cigarette smoking. You are more likely to get heart disease. We know that even after one single session of using a hookah, if you measure people's heart rate you'll see the heart rate has gone up. That's because the nicotine makes the heart work harder.'
But try telling that to a group of teenagers. These 15-year-old boys have been smoking hubbly for years and believe it's safer than cigarettes.
Ryan Seaton: 'To me I'd say that cigarettes are a lot more dangerous than hubbly because on the box for example there is a total between nicotine and tar. On the box, it is 0% tar and 0.5% nicotine, which, in comparison with a cigarette, is a lot more... is a big difference on the box.'
Dr Saloojee: 'There is no tar in cigarettes until you burn it. The tar is produced when you burn it. The same thing is true of hookahs. The hookah tobacco doesn't have tar in it, but the minute you burn it, you will cause cancer-causing chemicals and other things that is called tar - the same tar that you find on the roads.'
Also misleading is the nicotine content of 0.5% per kg. The box weighs 50g, so the nicotine content is 250mg - 15 times more than a box of cigarettes.
Devi: 'What's so great about sitting around and doing this?'
Jason Cowie: 'It doesn't really have a negative effect because if everyone is doing it then why should it be so bad for me to do it as well?'
Devi: 'So do you think that there are any negative side effects at all?'
Jason: 'Of course there are negative side effects. The thing is, it is not as bad as alcohol or cigarettes or whatever like that.'
Devi: 'And when did you start doing the hubbly?'
Matthew Crawford: 'I started a year ago.'
Devi: 'How old are you now?'
Matthew: 'I am 15... I started when I was 14.'
Devi: 'And how did it start?'
Matthew: 'At parties. I just saw the hubbly there and people said it wasn't bad so I tried to pull, liked the flavour, so I just started smoking it.'
Hubbly tobacco comes in every flavour imaginable - all of them sweet and fruity, making the taste more palatable to children. And because the smoke is filtered through water, it also makes the inhalation much smoother on the throat and lungs.
Sally Thorp (Head: Life Talk): 'There's this misconception that water is going to filter out the 'nasties'. But there are other harmful chemicals that are created through the burning of the coal that we are then going to be inhaling into our lungs.'
Sally Thorp is the Head of Life Talk, a forum that deals with the many challenges facing parents and children today. She believes hubbly smoking is very widespread.
Sally: 'It's becoming a bigger issue as well because younger siblings... we have seen a photograph of a three-year-old smoking hubbly! And then teens... we got an email from a teen saying it is so funny, because she blows instead of sucks.'
But Sally believes that parents, as well as children, need to be educated.
Sally: 'And at many of our talks we say, 'Show of hands, please, parents, who would give their child a packet of cigarettes to smoke in an afternoon?' And they're absolutely aghast and horrified: 'Of course we wouldn't!' 'But you're letting them smoke hubbly. Why?''
Devi: 'If we told you that smoking hubbly could give you lung cancer, would you stop?'
Ryan: 'I wouldn't say I'd stop now... I'm still a bit young.'
Jason: 'It raises a thought in my head because my grandfather died of cancer. It raises a thought, but it won't stop me from smoking hubbly.'
Devi: 'The perception that hubbly bubblies are safer than cigarettes extends to restaurants as well. Some restaurants offer hubbly bubblies to their patrons, even though they don't have designated smoking areas, thereby completely flouting anti-smoking laws.'
Dr Saloojee: 'You cannot use the hookah in an enclosed public place, just as you can't sell tobacco to anybody under the age of 18 years. That is illegal and it is punishable by a fine of R50000. The sad thing about South Africa is that parents are buying the tobacco and then giving their children the tobacco - and that's illegal.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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