Shisha café pollution ‘alarming’

The air in a café where shisha is being smoked is 40 times more polluted than the air outside in Qatar, according to a Gulf Times story quoting a study by the Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Smoking Cessation Clinic.

The head of the clinic, Dr. Ahmad al-Mulla, described the situation as ‘alarming’.

“It is very dangerous and we have put a proposal to the Supreme Council of Health to protect non-smoking people inside such a café,” said al-Mulla.“People should not be allowed to smoke inside cafés or at least they must place the smoking area outside the cafés.”

Al-Mulla was speaking on the sidelines of the second International Conference on Waterpipe Smoking organised by HMC.

Answering a question, al-Mulla said there were no separate statistics on the use of shisha in the country. But according to the available figures, 37 percent of people in the country smoked shisha or cigarettes. “We will soon launch another survey about the number of people smoking cigarette and shisha separately,” he added.

Al-Mulla called for the enactment of more laws against the use of shisha, especially in public places. “There must be effective measures to send out the message that shisha is not a safe option,” he said.

At the moment, there is a statutory warning on cigarette packs but no such warning against shisha use.