Cigarette butts polluting environment and food chain
Cigarette butts polluting environment and food chain
OVER 4.5 billion cigarette butts are clogging up rivers, forests, beaches, streets and parks, or two-thirds of all the cigarettes smoked in Spain in a year, and take between eight and 12 years to biodegrade, warns the Spanish Pneumology and Chest Surgery Society (SEPAR).
This leads to environmental pollution which can cause smoking-related illnesses in non-smokers, since the filters contain a large part of the most harmful substances, says SEPAR coordinator Dr José Ignacio de Granda.
These substances leak out when the filters come into contact with water, causing 'a huge threat to biodiversity' and even contaminating the food supply chain, Dr de Granda says.
This means people can become ill through fourth-hand smoking – 'first-hand' being by actual consumption; second-hand being passive smoking and third-hand through the remains of smoke left behind in areas where cigarettes are consumed.
Dr de Granda has called for health authorities to take measures such as those in Australia and New Zealand, where special bins purely for cigarette butts are set up in the streets, and in Paris and some cities in the UK where people are fined for dumping them on the ground.
He has also urged the tobacco industry to warn of the harmful effects of throwing cigarette ends on the floor, or to manufacture biodegradable filters, but this has not caught on as sector bosses say they would not taste very nice for smokers.
Practically all cigarettes sold in the last 50 years have cellulose acetate filters, which are broken down by the sun's ultra-violet rays sufficiently to disperse them completely and harmlessly, but which do not break down in any other conditions – especially on the ground or in water.
On average, cigarette ends lose 37.8% of their initial mass in the first two years after being discarded, but the rest takes up to 12 years to disappear.
The main problem lies in the toxic substances accumulating, since the filters are manufactured with the very intention of collecting up the most harmful chemicals so they do not land in smokers' lungs.
