Comparison with other smoking methods

The underlying principle at the back the use of a bong is the maintain that the cooling effect of the water helps to decrease the chance of burning the mouth, airways, and lungs, thus many claim that using a bong to smoke is safer. The water can trap some heavier particles and water-soluble molecules, preventing them from entering the smoker's airways.Thus the mechanics of a bong function similarly to those of a laboratory gas washing bottle. This "filtration" can lead to the belief that bongs are less harmful than other smoking methods.

However, a 2000 NORML-MAPS study found that "water pipes filter out more psychoactive THC than they do other tars, thus requiring users to smoke more to reach their preferred effect". In the study, smoke from cannabis supplied by the NIDA was haggard through a number of smoking devices and analyzed. An inhalation machine, adjusted to mimic the puff length of cannabis smokers, drew smoke through a standard bong, a small moveable bong with a folding stem, a bong with a mechanical paddle that thoroughly mixes the smoke with the water, and two different types of vaporizers. Comparisons to customary non-filtered smoking methods were not built-in in these experiments.

MAPSalso reviewed a study that examined the belongings and work of art of water-filtered and non-filtered cannabis and tobacco smoke. It found that when alveolar macrophages were exposed to unfiltered smoke, their ability to fight bacteria was reduced, unlike exposure to water-filtered smoke. It also found considerable epidemiological evidence of a lower occurrence of carcinoma among tobacco smokers who used water-pipes, as opposed to cigarettes, cigars, and regular pipes. "It appear that water filtration can be effective in removing components from cannabis smoke that are known toxicants... The effectiveness of toxicant removal is connected to the smoke's water get in touch with area.

particularly designed water pipes, incorporating particulate filters and gas-dispersion frits, would probable be most successful in this regard; the gas-dispersion frit serves to break up the smoke into very fine foam, thereby increasing its water-contact area. This study suggests that a bong's smoke is less damaging than unfiltered smoke.

An self-governing study by the World Health Organisation reports that the waterpipe's standing for safer use is groundless. Specifically, tobacco smokers must smoke more to get hold of the same nicotine "fix" and therefore inhale larger amounts of the other substance poisons in tobacco. This reflects the NORML statement above that smokers must use larger amounts of a drug through a waterpipe to gain the same quantity of THC. Since smoking-related diseases are reactions to the other chemicals inhaled as a side-effect, smoking any substance from first to last the waterpipe may increase the probability of disease owing to the greater than before amount inhaled.