A new study conducted by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and published on the JAMA Network this week suggests that smoking a bong may produce much more second -hand smoke than smoking a cigarette.
The study results show that “cannabis bong smoking in the home” produced four times greater concentrations of fine particulate matter than “cigarette or tobacco hookah (waterpipe) smoking”.
“The adverse health effects of particulate matter in secondhand tobacco smoke are well established, and they provide a context in which we should see these findings,” study co-author S. Katharine Hammond, a professor of environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley, said as quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
She also noted that “there is a common misperception, among young adults at least, that secondhand cannabis smoke is safe” and that the study she co-authored with graduate researcher Patton Khuu Nguyen “shows that that’s not true”.
The research states that, while 27 percent of young adults believe that exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke is safe, cannabis smoke “has several hundred toxic chemicals, carcinogens, and fine particulate matter, many at higher concentrations than tobacco smoke”.
The study also observes that, while previous secondhand tobacco smoke research “demonstrate causal links to cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, preterm birth, and decreased immune function… these concerns have not translated to cannabis bong smoking”.