Cigarette Butt in Liter of Water Can Kill a Fish in Just Four Days
Although a high amount of smoking bans are taking place nationwide to reduce smoke exposure indoors, the bans are having little impact on the number of cigarette butts thrown on the streets. With around 19.3% of adults 18 and older smoking cigarettes, it is no wonder that cigarette butts make up one third of America’s litter. Not only that, but they also account for about 28 percent of trash which washes up on beaches worldwide.
4.5 Trillion Cigarette Butts Littered Each Year
Of course there is no upside to this information. With about 4.5 trillion cigarette butts littered around the world each year, it is no surprise that cities started raising taxes on cigarettes to cover the costs for the mess. San Francisco is just one city which has raised cigarette taxes 33 cents per pack in 2009 to cover the $11 million spent on cleaning up cigarette litter annually. Not only are we paying out of pocket for this pollution, but every living creature as well as the environment is also suffering.
Smoking alone causes 5+ million deaths per year, and the sad part is that everyone is being affected – not just the smoker. The 7,000+ individual compounds in cigarettes, 70 of which being known cancer-causing substances, are being puffed into the air at alarming rates, causing massive health problems that affect the entire populations. The chemicals are also causing complications by being present in the water, with one study finding that a single cigarette butt in a quarter-gallon of water can kill a fish in just four days. In addition, the invisible gases and particles left behind from tobacco smoke, which is known as third-hand smoke, are also fueling sickness while receiving very little recognition.
And yet all of this is only a portion of the true cost of smoking. What many smokers may not realize is that they could be spending nearly $2190/year if smoking one pack a day. This cost does not include the 55 days given up each year, or the extra money paid out to various insurances.
By quitting smoking, you will be saving more lives and more of our planet than you know.
Thanks again liberal retards.
None of you offered any evidence to support your reprisals/rebuttals. Also, cig butts;the filters do not decompose."Butt" your minds are made up & impervious to info to your contrary,(whether you are correct or not).
OK- I'll give you some evidence to back up another persons claim that there is no way butts could make up 1/3 of our trash. Go to a waste collection center, or if you cant stand the smell, go to a garbage bin in any apartment complex in America. Look inside. Notice the volume of the bin and the size of the cigarettes in the bin. If the dumpster is full, ask yourself…"Is 1/3 of this dumpster comprised of cigarette butts?" That would be a lot of butts. It would probably take 50,000 butts to make 1/3 of the volume of a dumpster bin.
I totally agree, 1/3 of all waste seems a rather long stretch considering just how much garbage the U.S. generates on a daily basis, I'm just not buying that 1/3rd of it is made up of cigarette butts but what do I know, I'm a non-smoker.
There is the solution then, mandate cigarettes be biodegradeable.
Aren't you glad we have smokers in this world to help you guys figure out your problems.
Is the storm in your handle perhaps a xFireStormx?
Sincerely, I never read ANYTHING more stupid in my life, EVER. And I saw endless loads of mindless propaganda and utter crap so far.
"cigarette butts make up one third of America’s litter."
Turn your brain on. Try counting and calculating a little bit. the above is not only impossible, but it's beyond fiction. It's simply crazy.
" Not only that, but they also account for about 28 percent of trash which washes up on beaches worldwide"
Simply crazy nonsense. First of all, the butts are decomposing within weeks, so even if there were so many, what you claim above could never, ever happen.
I won't even bother with the rest, these two examples should suffice for any reader with more than two brain cells. This "article" is nothing but a bunch of brain-dead propaganda.
I do not care if you are stupid enough to smoke, but I CANNOT STAND IT when I see smokers flick their butts out of their car windows. THE WORLD IS NOT YOUR ASHTRAY!! If smoking is so great, close your windows so the smoke can't escape and keep your butts! JERKS!
I agree, I think if you want to smoke take responsibilty for the trash you generate. When I drink and drive I don't throw my Pabst blue ribbon cans out, or my mini J.D. whisky bottles! And I never toss joints out the window. I can recycle those in my big GREEN bong.
I do not care if you are stupid enough to drive, but I CANNOT STAND IT when I see drivers spew pollution out of their car exhaust. THE WORLD IS NOT YOUR CARBON MONOXIDE GREENHOUSE!! If driving is so great, park your car so the smoke can’t escape and ride your bikes! JERKS!
you are a funny man Ryan. I still think my response is better though.
Actually, evidence supports that the highly intelligent smoke because it slows down thought processes so that we can deal with you less intelligent non-smokers.
The article stated 1/3 of LITTER, not trash. Maybe that is more plausible?
Speaking of litter, I hate it when I park my car and come back to find someone put some flyer under my windshield wipers. When you look around, it seems that at least 25% of people toss them on the ground.
Smoking is disgusting. I wish all the people who clean sidewalks and mall entrances would go on "strike" for one week and let all the filthy butts pile up so people could see how careless smokers really are, they butt out right where they stand smack in front of doors so you have to tiptoe around the dirty butts to avoid stepping on them. Disgusting, filthy habit.
You really avoid coming into contact with a cigarette butt and the bottom of your shoe? Do you avoid stepping on everything? Poop, rocks, dust, lint, gum, candy wrappers, branches, and even cracks in the sidewalk?
How much do fat people cost us? Fat people use more than their fair share of resources, they eat too much food, they litter fast food wrappers on the ground, and they cost all of us so much money when they have to go to the hospital for fat related problems. I hate people who drive cars because all that pollution makes me cough when I am out riding my bike…sheeesh…try being happy with your own lives and you'll find you won't have to criticize everyone else's lives.
Those who smoke tobacco, sadly, are too weak minded to stop and there is little that can be done except hear them offer the weakest of self-justifications for continuing it. I wish I could supply some of my strength to them, but alas, it is not possible.
Nope, I don't have any disgusting addictions. But I am addicted to healthy food and exercise, though. I am 73 years old and still bench 360. This is down from 400 about two years ago. I figured, "Dang, why do I need to keep benching so much weight after all these years?" Then I slacked off a bit. I wonder if I will still be able to pick up the back of my vehicle (off the ground) when I am 100. Yes, I lift the back of my Mazda because the engine in the front is just a bit much with the frame and all, but I could pluck the engine out with my bare hands if I wanted. I have no problem lifting an ordinary V-8 engine off the floor.
I can't consider myself just a typical non-smoker, but I attribute at least some of my great health to not smoking.
Hee hee. Right on Adam. I smoke & drink beers after work…and Yes, you could say I am weak but I enjoy the life God gave us. There are a number of things that encumber human development. I trust your physical development is well suited to your spiritual one. Congrates on the bench presses.. very impressive at your age.
Right on, KevinJohn. You said it all when you wrote: "I trust your physical development is well suited to your spiritual one." It could happen no other way, as the spiritual component, in the manner of a conquering army, comes in advance of the physical when God inspires it.
If you know that God gave you your life, then you can really do little or no wrong. But those that "bootstrap" themselves up of their "own power, free will and accord," have little to do but accept their fate minus the happiness you obviously enjoy. There is only one bad thing about life, really, and that is one's failure to enjoy it even though the physical part of it might be so addictive and restraining as to possess the power to resist that "conquering army" mentioned above, even though it be but just for a little while (a mere handful of years on the earth.) I'm sure you would agree.
X2!
I wonder where all the beer bottles go.
Alcohol ruins lives and family, is the cause of more vehicle accidents and deaths related to it, causes more violence and stupidity. Anyone stupid enough to drink alcohol should have to pick up butts off the streets.
We all have bad habits others can't stand- what's yours..?…oh, your perfect?
Cigarette butts do so bio-degrade. We are not up to our armpits in butts. If all the tobacco haters didn't chase the smokers outside there would be a lot less. Fluoride in tap water kills fish too. I hate when I see condoms on the ground, all you non-smokers should stop having sex.
Don't talk about the cost, dear. Taxes are a man-made gimmick.
Don't talk about cigarette butt pollution, dear. If the anti's installed ashtrays, smokers would use them.(but you can't expect smokers to have much respect for your hateful laws).
You may, however, compare the water polluted from butts to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"Hey, I have a possible bad habit"
To me that can't qualify as a bad habit others can't stand!!!
…Yep: You're Perfect.
Well, thanks, Ricky. I know it's only sarcasm, but your words are still the plain, simple, unadorned truth. However, I did write that I am not so sure I am totally perfect, because, among several others, I do seem to so much like that cup of morning cocoa with my plain peanut butter sandwich for breakfast that I don't want to let it go.
The only way I could honestly judge myself to be overall perfect would be that even my mistakes, small though they may be (though some have been quite large in my day) would always prove to have been the right move in the greater scope of existence. If one does wrong and it turns out to have been right, then it can't have been wrong, right?
Alas, though, all my mistakes have not been redeemed yet, and so I can't claim overall perfection. Not yet, anyway. For instance, I still have a scintilla of admiration and regard for humankind in general that the beast itself ought to have stripped away from me (corrected) after 73 years of the very deepest, painstaking interacting with the thing. But I think this is only because I love his little ones (children) so much that I have been willing to sacrifice my greater sense of perfection to the broader evils of mankind for the children's sake. But in view of the "sake" that the children seem to be "enjoying" in this den of viperous iniquity that so many billions of humans very loosely and ignorantly reference as a "world," I have not sacrified enough, obviously.
Puts fish in pipe and smokes it. Problem solved.
I smoke. We are, in fact, up to our armpits in butts. There is no excuse for not disposing of butts properly. None. People who smoke and wish to continue to do so had best clean up or whatever regulations are put into effect will be due to the smokers and other litterers.
Scouts should be doing better things than picking up the butts of pigs.