Researched and Provided by Terry Taylor
It is estimated that several trillion cigarette butts are littered world wide every year. That is billions every day.
Cigarettes are the most littered item in America and the world.
Cigarette filters are not made of cotton and they do not biodegrade. They are made of compressed fibers of cellulose acetate, a plastic, similar to photographic film. Each filter contains a bundle of 12,000 tiny fibers painted white with titanium dioxide, which can be likened to shoe polish.
If you smoke filtered cigarettes these fibers end up in your lungs, an estimated one hundred per cigarette. These plastic fibers in your lungs are not going to come out. After decades, most will eventually decay into a plastic powder, releasing the 3,500 chemical particles and 500 gases, generated by the previously burning cigarette, that include arsenic, vinyl chloride, acetone mercury, lead, formaldehyde, nicotine, and hydrogen cyanide.
Pick up a few dozen butts and take a big whiff. That scent of bitter almonds is hydrogen cyanide. Now you can understand why so many people who quit smoking 30 or 40 years ago still develop lung cancer.
These cigarette butt chemicals in our streams, and lakes, and rivers,
and oceans are a significant threat to aquatic life.
o For instance, water fleas are tied into the entire food chain because they
eat bacteria and algae that fish cannot directly eat. Water fleas take this
energy and make it available to larger species that eat water fleas, like fish.
The water fleas are killed quickly by the poisons released by the butts.
One cigarette butt in two gallons of water will leak toxic chemicals within an hour of being exposed to the water.
iscarding cigarette butts on streets, parking lots, walkways, lawns, and beaches is a violation of litter laws and has been proven to have a severe adverse impact on the environment - the water, air, and land - the creation of the creator.
Our earth home is being used as an ashtray by over a billion smoking
human beings. Silence lends consent. Please, don't hesitate, help educate.
Nicotine: A poisonous alkaloid found in all parts of the tobacco plant, but especially in the leaves. When pure, it is a colorless oily fluid with little odor but a sharp burning taste. On exposure to air or in crude materials, it becomes deep brown with the characteristic tobacco-like smell. Nicotine is one of the most toxic and addicting of all poisons. Cigarette tobacco contains varying amounts of nicotine per cigarette.
Nicotine poisoning, acute: Nicotine is an extremely toxic substance that acts as swiftly as cyanide. The fatal dose for an adult is estimated to be less that 5 mg./kg. body weight.
Symptoms: Nausea, salvation, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, dizziness,
and mental confusion. If dose is sufficient, the patient will collapse, develop
shock, convulse, and die of respiratory failure due to paralysis of respiratory
muscles.