The "Cinnamon Challenge," a phenomenon in which participants attempt to swallow a teaspoon of cinnamon without coughing it up or drinking any water to help it go down is a growing sensation that is as popular among mostly adolescent-age children as it is dangerous to their health.

The challenge, which the New York Times report has been around for the last decade, has exponentially increased in popularity within the past 4-5 years. A Web site devoted solely to the challenge reports that it has become a YouTube sensation, with more than 40,000 videos having been uploaded depicting kids attempting to swallow a teaspoon of the spice, requiring that they keep it down for at least 60 seconds in order to meet the goal. Google reports 2.4 million hits for this challenge in 2012 alone.

The videos that depict kids taking part in this challenge show them inhaling a spoonful of cinnamon and in most cases immediately choking on it. As they choke, they exhale the cinnamon in a big puff, an action coined "dragon breath."

This seemingly harmless challenge can cause major health risks and a study released on Monday by medical journal Pediatrics shows that the Cinnamon Challenge is causing a growing number of emergency room visits and calls to poison control centers, as participants suffer coughing fits, vomiting, nosebleeds, difficulty breathing and some even more life-threatening consequences, according to reports.

"People are being poisoned and sickened because of this," Dr. Steven Lipshultz, professor of pediatrics at the University of Miami School of Medicine and author of the Pediatrics study released on Monday told the New York Times. "We have seen a rise in calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency rooms. Some teenagers have suffered collapsed lungs and ended up on ventilators."

And it's not just teenagers who are jumping on the Cinnamon Challenge bandwagon. YouTube videos show children as young as 9-years-old partaking in this activity and one video posted online even shows the governor of Illinois taking the challenge.

According to Lipshultz, the danger in this challenge is that cinnamon contains a substance called cellulose that can cause long-term pulmonary damage.

"The cellulose doesn't break down," Lipshultz said. "So when it gets in the lungs it sits there long term, and if it's coated with this caustic cinnamon oil, which leads to chronic inflammation and eventually scarring of the lungs, something we call pulmonary fibrosis. Getting scarring in the lungs is equivalent to getting emphysema."