No ifs and butts about it

Despite death warnings about cigarette smoking, you still see people  including teens (horrors, even tweens) and women  smoking everywhere. And you see  and often smell  cigarette butts discarded everywhere!

Did you know that when cigarette is put out, the residue left behind could constitute third-hand smoke? It could fall and attach itself to a nearby object, surface or floor. Babies could easily ingest this as they crawl on the floor and put their hands in their mouths.

A waste and pollution watchdog recently sent out smoke signals alerting the government, particularly the environment and health departments, to come up with an urgent regulatory policy that would ensure the proper management of cigarette butts or filters as toxic waste.

A member group of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance, Philippines (FCAP), the Eco Waste Coalition stressed the urgency of such a policy, given the known toxicity of cigarette filters and the piles and piles of butts generated and discarded here, there, and everywhere.

“Cigarette butt waste is the most visible toxic garbage that we could find in our surroundings.  Smokers litter butts on the streets, storm drains, and even on beaches and parks, or throw them with regular discards for disposal at dumpsites or landfills oblivious of the fact that each butt poses a toxic threat to human and animal health and the environment,” says Roy Alvarez, president, EcoWaste Coalition.

Such a policy on cigarette butt waste should embrace the precautionary principle which says “environmental harm does not have to be proven to justify preventing potential exposures.” It should include extended producer responsibility which, among others, states that “those who produce a toxic waste product should be held accountable for its cleanup.”

Dr. Maricar Limpin, sends this burning warning, “We need to stop this notorious environmental pollutant from its source. The most effective way to curb this ubiquitous litter problem is, of course, for smokers to choose health over tobacco addiction and to quit smoking.”

Be warned that cigarette butts contain numerous hazardous chemicals, including cancer-causing substances to justify calling them toxic wastes that require environmentally-sound management and disposal.

According to a paper from “Tobacco Control,” an international peer-reviewed journal for health professionals and others involved in the task of tobacco control, the “filters degrade very slowly and thus become an accumulating mass of potentially toxic waste.”

In his paper, Richard Barnes of the California-based Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said that “the trillions of cigarette butts generated each year throughout the world pose a significant challenge for disposal regulations, primarily because there are millions of points of disposal, along with the necessity to segregate, collect, and dispose of the butts in a safe manner, and cigarette butts are toxic, hazardous waste.”

He goes on to explain, “Toxic substances are leached from the filter and tobacco residue that pollute waterways, and probably pollute ground water near landfills that are not properly constructed to contain such leachates. Aquatic life may be harmed by the toxic leachates, and the butts may cause physical harm when ingested by animals.”

These butts, Barnes notes with concern, collect in municipal storm drains and then may empty into waterways, and can clog storm drains and sanitary sewer systems.

The economic and administrative burdens of cigarette butt waste should be taken off the state and local government agencies and taxpayers, according to Barnes.

Following the principles of product stewardship and extended product responsibility, Barnes stressed that tobacco manufacturers should shoulder the entire financial burden for the collection, transportation, and safe disposal of cigarette butt waste.

Now, here are some stark statistics: The Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris report for 2011 says that some 52,907,756 cigarettes/cigarette filters were collected out of the total debris items of 166,144,420 in the last 25 years of the annual coastal cleanup activities worldwide.

The Ocean Conservancy collected 56,376 cigarettes/cigarette filters out of the total debris items of 763,262 collected in the Philippines in 2010.

Remember, smoke gets in your eyes  and in your lungs!

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