| Dear
EarthTalk: Has anyone ever studied the environmental
impact of discarded cigarettes? I’m constantly appalled
at the number of drivers I see pitching their butts out
their car windows.
-- Ned Jordan, via email
| |
Studies
done by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and even the tobacco
industry itself show that contaminants from cigarette
butts can get into soils and waterways, harm or kill
living organisms and generally degrade surrounding
ecosystems.
© Jason Means, courtesy Flickr |
It’s
true that littered cigarette butts are a public nuisance,
and not just for aesthetic reasons. The filters on cigarettes—four
fifths of all cigarettes have them—are made of cellulose
acetate, a form of plastic that is very slow to degrade
in the environment. A typical cigarette butt can take anywhere
from 18 months to 10 years to decompose, depending on environmental
conditions.
But
beyond the plastic, these filters—which are on cigarettes
in the first place to absorb contaminants to prevent them
from going into the lungs—contain trace amounts of
toxins like cadmium, arsenic and lead. Thus when smokers
discard their butts improperly—out the car window
or off the end of a pier or onto the sidewalk below—they
are essentially tossing these substances willy-nilly into
the environment.
Studies
done by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) and even the tobacco industry
itself show that these contaminants can get into soils and
waterways, harm or kill living organisms and generally degrade
surrounding ecosystems.
While
individual discarded cigarette butts may be small, they
add up to a huge problem. Some 5.5 trillion cigarettes are
consumed worldwide each year. The non-profit Keep America
Beautiful reports that cigarette butts constitute as much
as one-third of all litter nationwide when measured by the
number of discarded items, not volume. According to the
Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit that advocates for stronger
protection of marine ecosystems, cigarette butts are the
most commonly littered item found on America’s salt
and fresh water beaches according to feedback received by
hundreds of thousands of volunteers taking part in the group’s
annual Coastal Clean-up event.
While
the tobacco industry may have its hands full just trying
to stay afloat in the maelstrom of ongoing bad publicity,
critics say it should be doing more to prevent cigarette
butt litter. “Just as beverage manufacturers contribute
to anti-litter campaigns, and have invested in public education
on litter issues, so too should the tobacco industry,”
says Kathleen Register, founder and executive director of
Clean Virginia Waterways, a non-profit that has spearheaded
the fight against cigarette butt litter in the mid-Atlantic
region of the U.S. She adds that cigarette manufacturers
“need to take an active and responsible role in educating
smokers about this issue and devote resources to the cleanup
of cigarette litter.”
Register
suggests a number of strategies including putting anti-litter
messages on all cigarette packaging and advertisements,
distributing small, free portable ashtrays, and placing
and maintaining outdoor ashtrays in areas where smokers
congregate. She also suggests putting an extra tax on cigarette
sales, with proceeds going toward anti-litter education
efforts and to defray the costs of cleaning up butts. “Picking
up littered cigarette butts costs schools, businesses and
park agencies money,” she says. “By taxing smokers
for anti-litter educational efforts, some of the costs of
cleaning up cigarette butts will shift onto smokers.”
One way or another, Register hopes, smokers will learn that
the Earth is not one giant ashtray.
CONTACTS:
CDC;
Clean
Virginia Waterways.
Dear
EarthTalk: I recently had a tissue mineral
analysis indicating that my levels of the nutritional element,
molybdenum, were off the chart. I believe this may be leaching
from my stainless steel cookware. Is this element toxic
to my body?
-- Barbara, Fruitland Park, FL
| |
Having
trace amounts of molybdenum in our bloodstreams is
not only normal but beneficial. But if your levels
are abnormally high, switching from stainless steel
pans to cast iron (pictured here) or anodized aluminum
might be a good idea.
© Getty Images |
Having trace
amounts of molybdenum in our bloodstreams is not only normal
but beneficial. The element piggybacks onto bacteria to
help us metabolize proteins and grow new cells, and also
helps keep our vertebrae and tooth enamel strong. But too
much of it can indeed be toxic.
Health care practitioners
worry more about miners exposed to molybdenum dust on a
daily basis than they do about everyday folks with occasional
and incidental exposure via cookware and ingested foods.
Few if any cases of acute toxicity in humans have been documented,
though animal studies have shown that ingesting small but
frequent amounts can lead to diarrhea, growth retardation,
infertility, low birth weight and even gout. It has also
been shown to negatively affect the lungs, kidneys and liver.
But most of us
need not fear, as the amount of molybdenum we get naturally
from eating foods like green beans, eggs, sunflower seeds,
wheat flour, lentils and cereal grain is not enough to cause
any severe health reactions, and, again, is an important
building block component of our diets. In fact, a deficiency
of molybdenum in one stretch of northern China—where
the element does not occur naturally in the region’s
soils—has been linked to a higher-than-normal rate
of esophageal cancer.
Additional amounts
of molybdenum could be getting into your foods from stainless
steel cookware, but manufacturers insist that if their products
are not dinged and pocked from overuse or abused with abrasive
brushes or detergents during clean-up they shouldn’t
leach much of anything into the food cooking inside.
Of all the elements
used to make stainless steel, molybdenum is one of the most
able to tolerate high heat without expanding, softening
or otherwise breaking down. That’s largely why it
is approved for use in food-grade products by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration. Incidentally, its heat tolerance
is also why it is used in the making of missiles, aircraft,
rifle barrels, light bulb filaments and furnace components.
While it is unlikely
that the amount of molybdenum in a normal human diet is
enough to cause severe health reactions, no one would fault
someone with reason for concern to take precautions. For
starters, if you do have too much molybdenum in your systems,
add some tungsten (sodium tungstate) into your diet, which
naturally reduces the concentration of molybdenum in human
tissues.
With regard to
cookware, switching away from stainless steel might be a
good idea for anyone with high molybdenum levels in their
bloodstreams. No cookware is perfect, but cast iron and
anodized aluminum seem to be the top choices today for cooks
concerned about leaching elements. While cast iron is known
to leach some iron into food, iron deficiencies were far
less common before World War II when most of our grandparents
cooked with it. And anodized aluminum is an ideal non-stick,
acid- and scratch- resistant surface which locks-in aluminum
that could otherwise leach into food.
CONTACTS:
International
Molybdenum Association |
