While we’ve made great strides in reducing roadside trash – largely through imposing and enforcing fines – when it comes to cigarette butts, we’re still litterbugs.
Each year U.S. smokers contribute some 176 million pounds of cigarette butts to the global waste stream. Many of the butts that are tossed out of car windows or snuffed out in parking lots are washed into storm drains. From there, they travel into creeks, rivers, and … eventually … the ocean.
Though small in size, filters pack a toxic punch, especially when they are discarded with some tobacco still intact. Globally, trillions of butts are discarded annually, making them one of the most prevalent forms of litter worldwide.
Studies have found that the chemicals in cigarettes are poisonous to fish and other aquatic life. When cigarette butts mix with water they leach out arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde, heavy metals, and nicotine, among other things.
Richard Gersberg, Director of San Diego State University’s Coastal and Marine Institute, was part of the research team that documented the toxicity of cigarette butts to fish. He estimates that cigarette pollution is more damaging to marine life than the sea of plastic debris known as Pacific Garbage Patch.
Looking at fish that the Environmental Protection Agency uses to benchmark water pollution, Gersberg’s team found that the chemicals from just one cigarette butt had the ability to kill fish living in one liter of water.
We all live upstream from the ocean. We need to work harder at preventing cigarette butts from polluting the environment. It’s bad enough that smoking compromises human health, we don’t need to share the toxic burden with aquatic life.
Web Links
http://publichealth.sdsu.edu/facultydetail.php?ID=51;
http://news.discovery.com/earth/cigarette-butts-tobacco-fish.html
http://marinedebrisblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/cigarette-butts-plastic-toxic-marine-debris/
http://sdsu-dspace.calstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10211.10/599/Slaughter_Elli.pdf?sequence=1
Photo, taken on June 11, 2009, courtesy of Michelle Ararat via Flickr.