Perceptions: Hookahs Safer Than Cigarettes? Wrong

There are issues here which I think the article correctly identifies:

Any water-pipe is made of material. Such materials may give off heavy metals when being "flamed" or if hot smoke is traveling through it...which end up in the lungs.

The water itself may not be pure and containment's within it may be aerosolized and end up in the longs.

By definition...something is getting through....so although that something may be less than what started out, it may also be different and either more or less harmful.

Smoke and other inhaled pollutants are hard on human airways and lung tissues. This is an inescapable fact.

It is just better not to smoke at all, and for that matter, run some kind of high efficiency filter in your furnace air conditioner (about 8-15 dollars) and maybe also a HEPA rated filter (about 100-200 dollars) in the bedroom to cut down as much as possible of long-term pollution load on the lungs. This is especially important for city dwellers...... After all...as significant amount of human time is spent inside our homes, and in our bedrooms, so cutting down on pollution in those places adds up over the long run to better lung health.