If you needed yet another reason to quit smoking, here it is.
Some exec at RJ Reynolds in the 40’s
“The damn government is making us take asbestos out of the filters. What can we put instead?”
“I know, how bout some space aged plastic!”
That’s crazy! I didn’t even realized they had plastic in them. Makes you wonder how many inconspicuous everyday items have the potential to become plastic waste.
Car tires are supposed to be bad. I remember reading each loses ~1kg in pulverised plastic dust over the lifetime?
Luckily, at least some of that is filtered from the air by people’s lungs.I didn’t even realized they had plastic in them.
you didn’t WHAT THE F???
It used to be cotton, didn’t it
Or even asbestos at some point lolI need some of those asbestos filters. My brand isn’t giving me cancer fast enough.
Aren’t microplastics from car tires more common?
Presumably plastic pollution is a superset of microplastic pollution
I thought so too, and maybe they are using a different metric in this article, but I couldn’t tell you since their source URL is a deadline…
This article is quite likely fake news. The first paper cited only says they’re the most common pollution on beaches.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935119300787
The metric is also “count”, not volume/mass, so not a very useful metric at all.
I also remember Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle being claimed as the highest plastic polluters as well.
I live in the US and it’s becoming more and more unusual in many places to see people smoking. As a result, I see fewer discarded cigarette butts than ever. Still not zero, but getting there.
It’s one of those big cultural shifts that has gone on in my life slowly but steadily. I recall my school bus driver would smoke doing his rounds, people smoking almost everywhere, even grocery stores. My family had lots of smokers, 3 out of my 4 grandparents smoked, all paid the piper, the habit led to their demise. Vending machines selling cigarettes everywhere. I recall it first was restricted on airplanes, with smoking sections separated with curtains, then in restaurants. A lot of it was ineffective and mostly symbolic, but then the biggest change was when California banned almost all indoor smoking in businesses, other states followed suit over the next decade. That combined with all the legal problems the tobacco industry had in the 90s has really caused a dramatic shift.
It’s the hardest thing about traveling to Europe for me. I love being in Europe, but after living in a part of the US with almost no smokers it is jarring to smell cigarette smoke everywhere on the streets there.
I get nostalgic whenever I smell cigarettes, which is very rare these days.
“hmm, the smell of cancer, addiction and poverty!”
I think in Europe it’s just the smell of cancer, addiction, and Europeans
I notice fewer people smoke here as well tbf
I live in the U.S. too and I still see a ton here in Indiana, but we also apparently have a nicotine addiction epidemic here that no one talks about much.
As of 2022:
Nearly 29% of Indiana adults currently use tobacco. Combustible cigarettes are the most used tobacco product, followed by e-cigarettes.
I don’t know what the rate is here in Massachusetts, but it’s rare to have to smell cigarettes these days. I really think we’re more likely to (and my kids complain about the stench) encounter pot smokers these days. I can’t help but think that’s a good thing … but have to follow up each with an obligatory dad lecture on the health concerns with putting burning anything in your lungs
So what would you be your solution?
Why do I need a solution to recognize a problem? Or are you saying that many addicts is a good thing?
how harmful do you consider tobacco in the context of booze?
Is it a contest?
No, i dont think so, i just don’t think its fair to demonize smoking if we celebrate drinking. everyone has a vice.
Both should be demonized.
When did I celebrate drinking? Both addictions are huge burdens on the healthcare system.
This post being about plastic waste caused by cigarettes, I’m not sure why you’re whatabouting alcohol.
It came up on the context of nicotine and how much people are addicted, yet i don’t see the uproar of the people who throw their empties into the river or on the road.
Because people were already aware of the problems there and, just based on comments, many people aren’t even aware that cigarette filters are plastic.
Do you bring up cigarettes whenever alcoholism is mentioned or is this only a one-way street?
I’m in Western NY, but even in NYC it’s less than 9%. The state offers a lot of support for quitting, perhaps that’s why.
Aren’t cigarettes like $15 a pack there? That probably has something to do with it.
That’s exactly it. I’m a smoker from one of the states with the lowest taxes on cigarettes. I’m heading to New York in a couple of weeks and I’ll be stocking up before I leave. If I lived there I would quit, can’t justify spending that money. I’ve already switched to a cheaper brand that has deals at Sheetz that make them roughly $5 a pack.
I’ve never done this myself, but I’ve known a couple people that take a ton of cigarettes with them when they go to New York. This is highly profitable and highly illegal.
They’re $15 throughout the state. So they’re probably more in the city.
Reservation cigarettes negate those prices though.
Reservation cigarettes negate those prices though.
TIL that, on at least some Indian reservations in the United States, cigarettes are sold, sold at a lower price and sold to the general public. I could not find a reference on Wikipedia; all I found was a seemingly unofficial webpage.
You don’t have to go to the rez. We used to buy cartons at the Indian smoke shops in Tulsa. $1 pack in the 90s.
Is it just being replaced by other equally bad habits? I just found out that disposable vape pens are a thing. Those have plastics and electronics inside. I have no idea what the numbers there are.
Although vaping has become really big, there’s a lot more people quitting smoking than there are picking up vaping.
And vaping is not equally bad by a long shot. Cigarettes are far worse for you. Also, vaping isn’t nearly as annoying for the people around the user. I say all this as a cigarette smoker myself.
Those disposable vapes are disgustingly wasteful. Apparently you can take them apart and make them reusable or repurpose the battery, but very few people are going to mess with that.
there’s a lot more people quitting smoking than there are picking up vaping
Sadly, in Australia, this isn’t the case. We had very, very low smoking rates, and vaping has opened up the floodgates to new nicotine addicts, many, many of which never even tried cigarettes.
I’m pretty annoyed about it, to be honest.
Another generation who will reap the rewards of cancer, which will be a massive cost to society. Financially and emotionally.
I really hope we can stem the tide.
I can’t claim to know the future, or more than doctors have described, but it really does seem that vaping is much better for your health compared to cigarettes.
You can feel it. Once you get used to vaping it doesn’t hurt at all. Meanwhile, after smoking for essentially my entire adult life, if I smoke too many I’ll feel it hard the next day.
I’m not claiming they’re the same as cigarettes. Just that if they hadn’t come along, a huge number of people (in Australia) may never have picked up a nicotine addiction at all.
And that’s a shame :(
Weed is more or less legal and available everywhere in the US.
That’s not at all true.
I love smoking. I know it’s killing me. I realize it stinks to other people. I never smoke indoors. I try my best to be considerate of others and never throw my butts on the ground.
But it’s getting a bit ridiculous the demonizing of smokers in the US. If I walk to the edge of a business’s property where there is literally no one and smoke a cigarette, I shouldn’t be harassed by cops or security to cross the street, go several blocks away, or similar.
LE are just assholes. I vape now but have dreamed of just hand rolling cigs ahead of time. Biodegradable, smells better, tastes better
Agreed on first point.
But when you hand roll do you use those tubes with a filter? I doubt it since you said biodegradable. The only times I hand rolled were when I was broke. A bag of Bugler with papers was like $2.50 back in the day. Roughly 50 cigarettes the way I rolled. But damn that shit killed my lungs. I’m sure a nicer brand would be better all around but no filter smokes fuck me up.
I never smoked hand rolls regularly; they didn’t feel bad in the moment but we were working with cardboard standoffs, not really much of a filter in that case. It’s probably for the best I’ve moved on from that
just light up a joint instead. it’s the greener alternative.
Absolutely, good for you. But if you smoke joints like I go through cigarettes you’re on Snoop’s level.
I never see people smoking in the Puget Sound area. I saw people smoking all over NYC when I was there.
If you know people at the right bodega you can get them much cheaper because they’re illegally imported from the south. Additionally, if someone is working in NYC they probably make better money than people in most other places, so $15 to them isn’t the same as $15 to me.
I was in the city a few years ago and my (latino in appearance) co-worker told me about a shop where he got some cheap packs. I (white in appearance) went to the shop about an hour later and was sold New York cigarettes at a ball-busting price. That’s just the reality some places.
If you’re curious, you can look at the bottom of the cellophane to find the tax stamp, which will tell you the state they were taxed for sale in
Nice. NYC tobacco tax is outrageous, so is Washington State.
Dislike smoking but realize that for addicts often public infrastructure doesn’t give you a lot of options for getting rid of butts. Seems like biodegradable butts should be mandatory. On the other hand I will lean into my horn if I see someone throwing butts out of their car. That is inexcusable - get an ashtray for your vehicle.
When I smoked I always put my butts in my pocket.
It’s not hard to pick up after yourself. Put the cig out, and instead of dropping it on the ground put it in your pocket. If thats too stinky carry a sandwich bag or dog poop bag for them.
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s interesting that birds have been using cigarette butts to line their nests. Turns out nicotine is a great miticide. Hopefully it’s not hurting them in the long run, which is why we should pick up our fucking garbage.
flicking your cigarette into the void is completely normal every place that I’ve lived in the US. it isn’t thought about or frowned upon. it’s simply part of the addictive ritual of having a cigarette
For many smokers, the world is their ashtray.
I mean, who cares? It’s the smokers’ problem? If you can’t dispose of your trash take it with you or stop producing it until you can. That’s true for any trash.
We expect people to carry doggie bags, too. Just clean up after yourself.
I realize that’s idealistic and that’s never going to happen because smokers be littering, but it makes me mad regardless.
doggy bags to take my food to go, or doggie bags to take the poo to go?
I just get all the tobacco out of the butt and put it in my back pocket until I find a trash can. It makes me stink even worse but that’s better than littering.
I do the same thing, but if you thought we stunk before that…man.
Nah I know how bad we stink. I’ve quit twice, long enough for it to become overwhelming again. I can’t smell it but I know it’s there.
I can’t smell it either at this point. I don’t smoke inside though.
I’ll never forget this one.
My ex and I were both chain smokers. I didn’t want to smoke inside but she was convinced a fan in the window was enough. I never smelled it before, but her mom bitched every time she came over.
When we split, I went back trying to work it out multiple times and I couldn’t stand the smell of her clean clothes even. It was awful. Even as a smoker I couldn’t stand the smell of that place. I remember falling asleep with her on the couch and just gagging.
I would NEVER smoke inside after smelling that. I also keep a cat litter container outside for butts and a Gatorade bottle with a little water in my car.
I threw cigarette butts everywhere when I was younger, then one day I seen a program about the butts ending up in waterways and I haven’t tossed one since.
Yeah I tossed and stomped, or flicked out the car window, when I was young. I was callous in so many ways in my youth. Littering cigarettes ain’t nothing compared to how I acted in general. I try to keep it in mind and not judge the youth of today harshly.
I don’t think it’s possible to quit smoking twice. The first time, there was just a longer gap between cigarettes.
In that case I never quit. I’ll keep this great advice in mind next time I feel like I have my life settled out and stress minimized so I can try again but give up immediately once I remember that the other two times didn’t count.
Good onya for picking up after yourself & self awareness.
It was super hard for me to quit too (4 or 5 times and years on NRT) but it gets easier slowly. For me it was very worth it but we all have our own journeys.
Just ban the filter. Let them smoke raw and unfiltered.
We should go back to using natural materials for filters, like asbestos. /s
Pretty typical response these days. “jUsT BaN iT!”
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Being very cynical, how does killing them faster not lessen the burden on society at large? It’s a burden I’m glad we choose to bear, but just literally mathematically, the amount spent worldwide on treating people with smoking damage is astronomical.
Statistically, it’s at least possible that the amount of cost saved by killing some smokers faster could be offset by causing other smokers to need medical treatment who would otherwise have avoided it.
Smoking with a filter has no health benefits. Statistically, there are even more illnesses with people that smoke with filter cause they on average smoke more cause it irritates the throat less.
Our local cancer NGO even lobbied to ban filtered sigarettes as they cause more smoking and are plastic litter.
Light cigarettes are even worse. Less harsh than regular filtered, light cigarettes have little holes on the paper around the filter that dilute the smoke with more air, but people end up inhaling harder to get the same dose of nicotine they would get with a regular cigarette, and the smoke ends up going deeper in the lungs.
Any smoker already knows they’re killing themselves. Now it turns out their “filters” are harming us. I can’t even use a plastic straw anymore for fuck’s sake. Why not get rid of the filter?
Any smoker already knows they’re killing themselves
Which is one of many reasons why the vast majority of smokers are trying to quit. I’ve never known anyone who’s become addicted to nicotine who DIDN’T eventually want to stop.
Why not get rid of the filter?
Because it would increase the harm to both smokers and victims of passive tobacco inhalation immensely, which would in turn increase the already outsized strain on healthcare systems around the world, leading to a spiral of compounded misery throughout society.
It would be needlessly cruel while resulting in little to no benefit.
A better solution would be to ban the hundreds of different additives in cigarettes that make them more toxic and addictive than the tobacco itself already is.
That and roll back the bans of flavored e-juice while actively promoting the most effective smoking cessation method, adult vaping.
Refillable ones only, of course. Disposable vapes are an environmental scourge and also generally much less effective than the good ones.
If we were serious about getting people to quit, it would be better to force producers to slowly decrease the nicotine content, and the other addictive additives used in cigarettes. Of course the producers lobby and sue governments trying to limit them in any way.
Or, and hear me out here, since no one would die from withdrawal and the product has no medicinal benefits and directly causes adverse health outcomes with no redeeming qualities: stop production completely.
I spent over 20 years enslaved to nicotine. Now that I’m free, I don’t want to see anyone else have to go through it.
I thought tires were responsible for like 25% of micro plastics.
Never mind. I just read what I wrote, and realized they’re two different things.
Not a smoker, but I believe smokers are treated poorly, as are businesses that cater to smokers.
But my beliefs are really put to the test everytime I see a smoker throw their butt on the ground.
Not treated poorly enough.
Why should any human being be treated poorly?
For being disrespectful to the people around them.
I agree it’s disrespectful. I have often picked butts up and handed them back.
For people in motor vehicles, I tend to pick them up and tuck the butt under their windshield wiper. This is relatively easy if I’m on my motorcycle stopped at a traffic light.
You shouldn’t paint with such a broad brush. There are plenty of considerate smokers who try not to smoke around others and never litter our butts. Just like with so many other things, the people who are highly visible assholes give others a bad name.
That’s fair.
I wasn’t aware cigarettes contained any plastic at all
The filters are basically all plastic except the paper around them.
And as the article already says what’s even worse is the cocktail of chemicals in those filters which are even more harmful than simple PET and the like.
That we know of, I bet microplastics is actually worse but we can’t measure it in aggregate well.
So many people don’t realise the reality of cigarette waste.
“It’s just one small butt” adds up to:
- 4.5 TRILLION butts littered globally each year - - Enough to circle the Earth 300 times if placed end to end
“It’s just paper and cotton” - NOPE:
- The filter is plastic (cellulose acetate)
- Contains over 15,000 plastic fibres
- Takes up to 14 years to break down
- Even then, it just becomes microplastics
“Rain will wash it away” - Yeah, right into:
- Storm drains
- Rivers
- Oceans
- Fish (they mistake them for food)
“At least it’s not toxic” - Actually:
- One butt can contaminate up to 40 liters of water
- Contains arsenic, lead, nicotine, and other toxins
- Kills fish, birds, and other wildlife
I knew about the first part and the third and fourth, but I had no idea that it also contributed so much to plastic pollution.
