Sexual social media posts are promoting harmful shisha, new study suggest.

The researchers, from from Florida International University, randomly selected 279 posts from 11,517 tagged #hookah or #shisha over four days in October 2016.

Out of more than 11,500 Instagram posts at any one time, nearly all advocate hookah, with just 0.4 percent highlighting its health risks, a US study found.

Researchers wrote: 'A growing body of evidence suggests that hookah smoking can lead to nicotine dependence and many other known smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory disease.'

Hashtags such as #hookahaddiction produce thousands of pictures of semi-naked women promoting shisha bars or appreciation societies under captions like 'hookah is sexy'.

Some even call a dependency on so-called hubble bubble smoking a 'badge of honour'.

Results suggest 29.2 per cent of shisha-related posts are created by hookah bars, while 35.5 per cent promote it as a social activity.