Liturgy of the Word
June 2, 2018
Theology graduates told ‘Be beacons of light’
June 2, 2018

What’s really in a puff…

Over seven million people a year die because of tobacco use.

By Simone Delochan, sdelochan.camsel@rcpos.org

“Tobacco not only produces lung cancer, but it is a cancer to the lungs of the earth.” This statement was made by the prior co-cordinator of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Armando Peruga who had reviewed a 2017 report by WHO on tobacco use and the impact on the environment.

There is absolutely no winning for smokers. After inhaling a cocktail of toxic chemicals, and dropping cigarette butts onto the road, or sticking them into the sand while at the beach, smokers are in fact, releasing the residual toxins into the environment.

The WHO report describes a grim scenario. Tobacco waste has over 7,000 toxic chemicals which leach into the environment. According to a fact sheet from the group Citizens for Clean Open Spaces some of these chemicals are: arsenic, butane (found in lighter fluid), formaldehyde which is used in embalming, lead, napthalenes (used in explosives and moth balls), phenol (used in disinfectants and plastics), hydrogen cyanide (used as a poison in gas chambers).

Over seven million people a year die because of tobacco use, and some of them would have left a lasting legacy in the carelessly discarded cigarette butts.

In Trinidad where there is a paucity of bins at the side of the road, the cigarette butts end up in the drains, to be washed away into the sea, or are thrown out of a car window where during the Dry Season, fires can be started.

WHO estimated that in 2012, 967 million daily cigarette smokers worldwide consumed 6.25 trillion cigarettes. Given that statistic, think about the vast quantities of toxins collectively, both in the bodies of smokers and in the environment.

Then there is the impact of secondhand smoke which contains double the amount of nicotine, and 147 times more ammonia; and third-hand smoke, which remains as pollutant in dust and surfaces (indoors) and in landfills.

The impact on the environment from the tobacco industry begins from the actual growth of tobacco, “From start to finish, the tobacco life cycle is an overwhelmingly polluting and damaging process” (WHO, 2017).

The abovementioned fact sheet states that tobacco plantations deplete soil nutrients, cause green tobacco disease in farmers, and there is a heavy reliance on fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fumigants. Tobacco is a sensitive, disease-prone plant and can require up to 16 applications of pesticides.

These accumulate in the soil and eventually negatively impact the soil’s fertility, which means that no other crops can be grown on that space. What happens then? More trees are cut to provide acreage for crop growth.

Tobacco leaves are cured using large quantities of wood thus contributing to deforestation as well. Over 100 countries grow tobacco, and in the larger-producing countries, like Zimbabwe and China, coal is also used to cure the tobacco leaves, which emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas and largest contributor to global warming. So damaging are the effects of tobacco growth, to both the environment and farmers’ health, that it is banned in some countries.

There is still a social acceptance to the littering of cigarette butts, but we have all seen accumulation and realise what an eyesore it is. WHO estimated that 340–680 million kilogrammes of tobacco waste are dumped every year. Cigarette butts account for 30–40 per cent of all items collected on coasts and in city areas.

Cigarette butts are non-biodegradable and can take up to ten years to decompose but because they are so small, very little thought is put into the chemicals which remain in a cigarette filter.

According to the site truthinitiative.org, 98 per cent of cigarette filters are made of “plastic fibres (cellulose acetate) that are tightly packed together” and breakdown is highly dependent on “environmental conditions like the sun and rain”.

According to aquatic bioassay studies by the USA EPA in 1996, one cigarette butt per two litres of water is acutely toxic to water fleas, “a planktonic animal that occupies a critical position in the food chain of aquatic ecosystems by transferring energy and organic matter from algae to higher consumers such as fish”.

Water fleas are used to test the levels of toxicity of chemicals in aquatic invertebrates, and in the study done, all of them died. Now consider the impact on, for example, oysters, which is a favourite for some Trinbagonians, with a good pepper sauce. Underwater plant life also absorbs these chemicals, and think as well on how drinking water is affected.

The best suggestion to rectify moving forward, is simply to cease supporting the tobacco industry, which makes exorbitant profits every year while destroying the health of both its consumers and the environment.

It’s easier said than done, however, given the high levels of addiction that is the smoking habit. Strange that this product, which kills millions of people worldwide, has had neither greater governmental scrutiny nor control, and neither, at least here in Trinidad and Tobago, are there any initiatives to help wean citizens off the habit.

Instead, profitability is ensured as the local company exploits the addiction and raises the prices of their product almost annually. The short-term thing that smokers can do is use ashtrays and provided receptacles to dispose of butts instead of littering.

In the long term, try to stop smoking.