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Butt really? The environmental impact of cigarettes.

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TLDR
This special supplement of Tobacco Control brings together the currently known science about cigarette butt waste and sets the stage for a new research agenda that can unite the tobacco control community with environmental activists who have long been appalled by the single most commonly collected waste item found each year on beach clean-ups.
Abstract
Are cigarette butts more than just an unsightly litter problem? Do the chemicals leached out of them just ‘go away’—biodegraded and diluted by our streams, rivers and oceans so that we can forget about them? This special supplement of Tobacco Control brings together the currently known science about cigarette butt waste and sets the stage for a new research agenda that can unite the tobacco control community with environmental activists who have long been appalled by the single most commonly collected waste item found each year on beach clean-ups. In addition, butts are also reported to comprise an estimated 25–50 percent of all collected litter items from roads and streets—making them a concern for the quality of urban life. Cigarette butts contain all the carcinogenic chemicals, pesticides, and nicotine that make tobacco use the leading cause of preventable death worldwide, yet they are commonly, unconsciously and inexcusably dumped by the trillions (5.6 trillions and counting) into the global environment each year. In this issue, Moerman and Potts demonstrate the presence of heavy metals in cigarette butt leachates—the …

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Journal ArticleDOI

A critical review of the issue of cigarette butt pollution in coastal environments

TL;DR: Proposals for reducing smoking, littering and marine pollution as a contribution to reduce the problems caused by CB in coastal and marine environments are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Nano-litter from cigarette butts: Environmental implications and urgent consideration.

TL;DR: By considering the diffusion of the nanomaterials into different environmental compartments, the results suggest a new emerging and global contamination of the environment by cigarette butts, comparable to plastic litter, which urgently needs to be considered.
Journal ArticleDOI

Banning Smoking In Parks And On Beaches: Science, Policy, And The Politics Of Denormalization

TL;DR: The impetus is the imperative to denormalize smoking as part of a broader public health campaign to reduce tobacco-related illness and death and invoke limited evidence, which is hazardous for public health policy makers.

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY Banning Smoking In Parks And On Beaches: Science, Policy, And The Politics Of Denormalization

TL;DR: A review of state and local statutes shows that during 1993-2011, smoking was banned in 843 parks and on 150 beaches across the United States as mentioned in this paper, and three justifications for these restrictions have been invoked: the risk of passive smoke to nonsmokers, the pollution caused by cigarette butts, and the long-term risks to children from seeing smoking in public.
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