Besides its negative health effects, sharing a water pipe or hookah can lead to infectious diseases including hepatitis B, Chancellor of Iran University of Medical Sciences Seyed Javad Mir-Esmaeil warned. “Unfortunately, in the last two years the average age of first use of hookah has decreased to 13, and currently, 37% of adolescents smoke hookah,” IRNA quoted him as saying. He also pointed to the negative irreversible effects of hookah on men’s fertility and said, “There is statistically a significant negative correlation between hookah smoking and sperm count, as hookah contains harmful heavy metals such as arsenic, chromium and lead.”
