| Most anti-smoking propaganda would have you believe that
smoking = death. The simple fact is that this is not the case and the
US government has known this since 1963 when it funded a study theat
discovered that use of a waterpipe reduces tar by 91%! Further studies
have shown that use of a vaporizer can reduce tars by 97%. Even as far
back as the early 1900s, articles in the Journal of the American
Medical Association have indicated that even smoking through a normal
dry pipe is healthier than smoking a cigarette.
What about the smoking medium, what difference does it make? For
the most part this will come down to a personal preference that you
will have to reach through experimentation and experience but here is
what we have learned over the years from personal experience, the
advise of friends, and industry experts. Probably the least popular
smoking method amongst contemporary tobacco smokers is the use of the
traditional mediums. These include corn cob, briar, and meerschaum. For
the most part this is because of the altered taste produced by briar
and corn cob. Corn cob tobacco pipes tend to add a slightly sweet taste
to your tobacco while briar pipes tend to add a woodsy taste.
Meerschaum on the other hand tends to be unjustly frowned upon and
categoried with these traditional smoking method even thought most
contemporary smokers have never tried one. The great thing about
meerschaum pipes is that, like glass pipes, the are virtually inert,
meaning that they add little or no taste to your tobacco. While this is
a matter of personal preference, it seems that todays tobacco smokers
common prefer an unadulterated taste, which explains the amazing boom
in glass tobacco accessories in recent years. When you combine the
inert state of glass with the virtually unlimited designs that can be
made from it, it is understandable that glass is quickly becoming the
preferred smoking medium for contemporary tobacco smokers.
Additionally, choosing pipe tobacco over cigarette tobacco will
decrease your exposure to the adulturants common used in cigarette
tobacco. Just a few examples are as follows:
- Arsenic: Used in rat poison
- Acetic Acid: Hair dye and developer
- Acetone: The main ingredient in paint and finger nail polish remover
- Ammonia: A typical household cleaner
- Benzene: Rubber cement
- Cadmium: Found in batteries and artists’ oil paint
- Carbon Monoxide: Poison
- Formaldehyde: Used to embalm dead bodies
- Hydrazine: Used in jet and rocket fuels
- Hydrogen Cyanide: Gas chamber poison
- Napthalenes: Used in explosives, moth balls, and paint pigments
- Nickel: Used in the process of electroplating
- Phenol: Used in disinfectants and plastics
- Polonium: Radiation dosage equal to 300 chest x-rays in one year
- Styrene: Found in insulation material
- Tuluene: Embalmers glue
- Vinyl Chloride: Ingredient found in garbage bags
What does all of this mean to you? This means that if you want to
smoke, there are options out there to minimize, or even almost
eliminate, the harmful effects that you are reminded of every day. |
