Butt really? The environmental impact of cigarettes

Are cigarette butts more than just an unsightly litter problem? Do the chemicals leached out of them just ‘go away ’dbiodegraded 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 25e50 percent of all collected litter items from roads and streetsdmaking 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 leachatesdthe toxic soup produced when butts are soaked in water; Slaughter shows that only one cigarette butt will kill half the fish exposed to leachates in a controlled laboratory setting; Harris describes the history of how tobacco companies used filters as a marketing tool in an effort to allay fears about the harm caused by cigarettes, even after the companies knew that filters did not reduce risk. Smith and Novotny reveal the tobacco industry ’s long-standing concern about the cigarette butt problem and how it has responded by shifting responsibility for the job of cleanup back to its victims. Schneider et al analyse tobacco product litter as an economic issue, with costs of cleanup borne by communities instead of the tobacco manufacturers. Barnes describes some important regulatory and environmental principles that should underlie efforts to mitigate cigarette butt waste, including the Precautionary Principledwhich states that environmental harm does not have to be proved to justify preventing potential exposuresdand Extended Producer Responsibilitydwhich asserts that those who produce a toxic waste product should be held accountable for its cleanup. To grapple with toxic cigarette butt waste, we can look for lessons in other interventions against environmental pollution: