Everywhere you look you will easily find cigarette butts on the ground. In parking lots, parks, beaches and on roads. Almost a third of the litter found on beaches and in rivers and streams are smoking-related debris. It seems as if smokers don’t give it a second thought when you throw their butts on the ground or out of vehicle windows. Maybe they don’t realize the damage this simple, but frequent act, has on the environment around them.

The butt of a cigarette is the filter, which is made of plastic (cellulose acetate), and it is non-biodegradable. The sun may break the filter down into smaller pieces, eventually, but the toxic material will always be present. Carcinogenic chemicals, pesticides, nicotine and heavy metals, that are found in the filter, leach into the environment and poison living organisms both on land and in the waterways. Research has found that it takes only a small concentration of the toxic chemicals found in cigarette butts to kill fish that ingest it.

These toxic butts can be ingested by children and animals, especially birds and marine animals, which will poison them and possibly lead to death. Tossed cigarette butts have also led to forest fires.

In 1965, almost half of all Canadians smoked! By 2011 that ridiculous number went down to 17.3 percent. Even today, ‘Tobacco Use in Canada: Patterns and Trends’ states that 37,00 Canadians will die prematurely due to tobacco use and that every day 100 Canadians die from a smoking-related illness. Some of those people have never smoked a day in their lives but have had to contend with second hand smoke from loved ones or co-workers. With all of the research and information about the health risks of smoking, plus the expense of them, it always makes me wonder why people are still smoking. On the bright side we have made some progress. In Canada, after years of fighting, we no longer have to deal with cigarette smoke in most buildings and now there are even by-laws protecting children in parks and vehicles.

Let me be perfectly clear — there is no such thing as a safe cigarette and we do not encourage anyone to smoke.

~ Bennett S. LeBow, Omni Cigarette Chairman

 

If you are going to smoke, please do not throw your butts on the ground. It’s littering and it’s dangerous.

Sources:

DeNoon, Daniel J. “Cancer Lites?” WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 25 May 2016.

Hastrup, Janice L. “Consumers’ Knowledge and Beliefs about the Safety of Cigarette Filters.” Tobacco Control. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2016.

“Toxicity Studies.” Cigarette Butt Pollution Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 May 2016.