|
|
|
Butts Kill
By
David E. Wilson, Jr.
ost trash is more unsightly than it is toxic, but in the case of cigarette
butts the hazards go beyond ugliness.
mokers discard billions of cigarette butts annually, trading the hassle
of using an ashtray for a flick out the window. Boaters often toss
them into the water. In either scenario, the butts usually end up
in bodies of water, which has made them the number one piece of trash
collected every year during the annual river and coastal cleanups.
or decades, researches have seen their effect on birds and turtles
that mistake them for food and perish when they cause a bowel obstruction.
However new studies show that butts are toxic to aquatic insects,
the proverbial canaries in the coal mine.
bout 95 percent of cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate
which helps absorb smoke vapors and chemicals. Filters help soak up
the highly toxic alkaloid nicotine, a powerful insecticide and among
the deadliest of all plant products in its pure form. Additives, including
flavoring and humectrants sometimes constitute up to 10 percent of
the weight of the "tobacco" portion of a cigarette. The
"tar," often referred to in connection with cigarettes,
is not a black petroleum tar product but instead refers to the hundreds
of substances and additives found in tobacco. Since tobacco is not
classified as a food or drug, there are no legal maximums on agricultural
chemicals or chemical additives cigarettes may contain.
 he
US Department of Agriculture estimates that in 1998, 470 billion cigarettes
weighing about 180 million pounds were consumed in the U.S. In that
same year, Coastal Cleanup volunteers collected 1,616,841 butts.
 urious
about the potential impact of so much litter, scientist began researching
its effects on certain species of planktonic animals in 2002. Static
acute toxicity tests using such animals have been widely used for
decades to estimate the toxicity of chemicals to aquatic invertebrates.
Such organisms serve as food for higher consumers such as fish.
 ata
collected during the butt experiments were used to develop dose-response
curves. Results showed that chemicals in cigarette butts leach quickly
into water and are acutely toxic to phytoplankton at concentrations
below 0.13 cigarette butts per liter of water. This translates to
one cigarette butt per eight liters, or approximately one butt per
two gallons of water. The studies also showed that leachate from the
remnant tobacco portion of a cigarette butt is deadlier at smaller
concentrations than are the chemicals that leach out of the filter
portion of a butt.
igarette
butts in the environment are a litter issue — not a smoking
issue. Smokers must realize that the outdoors are not their personal
ashtray and that their litter is killing essential life at the bottom
of the food chain and accumulating in higher organisms. Volunteer
time and taxpayer money is also being spent to clean up their mess.
 ur
bays, rivers, and oceans deserve better, and considering the amount
of energy it takes to use an ashtray, this is one stewardship issue
that smokers have no excuse not to espouse.
 athleen
Register, executive director of Clean Virginia Waterways and adjunct
faculty in the Department of Natural Sciences at Longwood College
in Farmville, VA contributed to this article, parts of which were
printed in the “Underwater Naturalist, Bulletin of the American
Littoral Society.”
Related Watersheds.tv presentations:
 International
Coastal Cleanup
Coastal
Bays Cleanup
Contact Dave Wilson
See past topics of In the Flow here!
|
|
|
