AUSTIN (KXAN) — The University of Texas at Arlington announced Monday that the National Institute on Drug Abuse awarded a two-year, $442,763 grant to a faculty member to study whether hookah use is “a cleaner alternative to smoking cigarettes.”
The recipient, Dr. Ziyad Ben Taleb, is an associate professor of kinesiology (the study of human movement) and lab director for UT Arlington’s Nicotine and Tobacco Research Laboratory. He said in the announcement he’s concerned about claims made by companies selling electronic heating elements.
“There is a new trend of electronic heating elements that heat the tobacco without combustion. There are marketing claims that these are safer, but we don’t know. That’s why this study is needed,” he said.
A hookah traditionally use hot coals to heat tobacco. A smoker then breathes in through a hose connected to the pipe’s base. This pulls the smoke down the pipe body and through water in the pipe’s base. The smoke continues up through the hose and into the smoker…