Poisons leach from the 4 trillion cigarette filters that we chuck each year, harming health and environment alike. They should be banned
FOR the past two decades, the environmental group Ocean Conservancy has organised the annual International Coastal Cleanup. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers scour beaches all over the world, picking up trash. By far the most common item they pick up is cigarette butts. Last year they removed more than 2 million of them. Cigarette butts are also the most common item collected during urban litter surveys.
By one estimate, around two-thirds of the 6 trillion cigarettes smoked worldwide every year end up being dropped, flicked or dumped into the environment – around 750,000 tonnes in total.
The effects of cigarettes on smokers' health is well known. I think it is time we paid more attention to the effects of cigarette waste on public health and the environment.
My non-profit Cigarette Butt Pollution Project has studied cigarette waste from a number of perspectives, including toxicity, accidental consumption by children and animals, and potential for human health effects. The results suggest that we urgently need to reduce this burden of toxic waste.
Used cigarette butts are not just pieces of non-biodegradable plastic. They also contain the carcinogens, nicotine and toxins found in all tobacco products.
We have found that one cigarette butt soaked in a litre of water for 96 hours leaches out enough toxins to kill half of the fresh or salt water fish exposed to them. We know that children and animals consume these pieces of toxic trash, that there are costs to the communities that must deal with them, and that there is biological plausibility to the idea that so many cigarette butts tossed into the environment each year may leach out chemicals that could impact human health.
We have also found that the tobacco industry has thoroughly distanced itself from any sense of responsibility. Many other industries have signed up to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a principle which assigns responsibility for the environmental management of consumer waste to manufacturers of the original product. EPR has been applied to electrical appliances, batteries, paint, mattresses, car tyres, electronic gadgets, beverage containers and other consumer products, and has dramatically reduced the environmental blight and health risks associated with these products. However, it has been assiduously avoided by the makers of the most deadly of all consumer products, cigarettes.
The tobacco industry is aware of the problem of cigarette butt waste but has largely left responsibility for clean-up to communities and individual smokers. Its own efforts are more about image than action, such as supporting reputable environmental groups' clean-up campaigns and distributing hand-held ashtrays, as if these might somehow encourage smokers to refrain from butt-flicking. These approaches have not worked.
Some in the tobacco industry have proposed replacing plastic filters with biodegradable ones. This is not the answer. Biodegradable filters would still leach out toxins while falsely reassuring smokers that they were protecting the environment. They would be more likely to dump their butts without feeling as guilty as they do now.
We have proposed a number of options to address the problem. One in particular holds promise: get rid of filters altogether.
According to the US Surgeon General and the US National Cancer Institute, filters do not have any health benefits for smokers; in fact, cancer risks have actually increased over the 50 years they have been used.
Filters were originally designed to keep loose tobacco out of smokers' mouths, not to protect their health. So they are really a marketing tool. They seem to reassure smokers that they are doing something to limit the health consequences of smoking and thus may discourage them from quitting. They also make smoking more palatable and make it easier for children to start. The ventilation provided by the filter may reduce the tar and nicotine yields of cigarettes as measured by a machine, but smokers compensate by changing their puffing behaviour and inhaling more deeply.
For these reasons, filters may be considered a health hazard. If their purpose is simply to market cigarettes and make it easier to get addicted, they should be banned. This would simultaneously slash the environmental burden of cigarette butt waste and decrease the addiction potential of tobacco. Both the environment and public health would benefit.
The first moves are being made in that direction. Earlier this year, a group of politicians submitted a bill to California's State Assembly to ban the sale of filter-tipped cigarettes. The bill failed, but its sponsors say they will try again.
In the meantime, the problem is likely to get worse. Indoor smoking bans may make public spaces more pleasant but they encourage people to dump butts outdoors. The environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy reported a 43 per cent increase in cigarette littering in England after an indoor smoking ban was introduced in 2007. And the e-cigarettes now widely used by smokers may be a new source of environmental contamination, with the batteries and used nicotine cartridges being carelessly discarded.
Smokers and policy-makers have been deceived by the promise of filters as health-protective devices when in fact they do not make cigarettes safer and they discourage quitting. If these marketing tools were removed, many more smokers will decide to quit, fewer kids will take up smoking, the environment will be cleaner, and those who do quit smoking will spend their money on other consumer products. It's time to stub them out.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Time to kick butts"
Thomas Novotny is a professor of global health at San Diego State University, California, and founder and chief executive of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project
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