you can find on sidewalks, on beaches, in railway track beds and around the house: cigarette butts waiting the most commonly discarded waste product in the world. This is not only problematic because of the stubs contained toxins. The filters are also to a large part made of the hard biodegradable plastic, cellulose acetate.
billions of carelessly weggeschnippter Tilt contribute daily to the growing plastic waste problem. Scientists from London and San Diego, demand in the British Medical Journal to ban the sale of filter cigarettes completely. They argue that the filters are a sham: in order to save the tobacco and to let the people believe, they would make the Smoking less harmful.
filters are not a “safety argument”
in fact, the invention of the filter cigarette in the 1950s, was a reaction of the tobacco industry on studies showing that Smoking causes lung cancer. Cigarettes with Filter, the former promise of advertising, would absorb some of the tar and so a “healthier” Smoking permit. “We know now that this security argument was a fairy tale – one of many, which was invented by the tobacco industry to sell cigarettes”, to write to Thomas Novotny from the San Diego State University, and his colleagues from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in her editorial. The Filter thus, even in smokers pull strong to of a cigarette, so that carcinogenic to be more deeply inhaled into the lung tissue.
According to a study at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen from the year 2016 to be disposed of by the year to 5.6 trillion cigarettes smoked 4.5 trillion improperly. In 2017, the world health organization (WHO) reported that up to two-thirds of all cigarette butts end up on the ground. With 15 billion sold Glimmstängeln the 10 billion butts every day to do.
These consist for the most part of cellulose acetate, a plastic that degrades only very slowly biodegradable. It can take up to ten years for a cigarette filter has completely decomposed. While Fast-Food chains, in the meantime, would an increase in the responsibility to produce less plastic waste, it has managed the tobacco lobby, “to avoid the public outrage,” said Novotny and colleagues. It had to go, in your opinion, therefore, now therefore, the discussion of the dangers of Smoking with the to bring about global destruction of the environment together.
Leading cause of death and disease
Here, the authors lead to the ban of disposable plastic that the EU sticks by 2021 for certain plastic items, including plastic Cutlery, straws and watts, has decided to. “The exclusion of the Filters from the plastic Directive seems to be a missed opportunity,” argue the scientists. Instead, it is hot in the Directive only in a General way, that the industry should help to “cover the costs for waste management and disposal, data collection, and awareness-raising measures”.
The health researchers are close to your contribution so that the tobacco epidemic is worldwide, remains a leading cause of death and disease. “And will remain as the threat of global warming for so long, until Nations implement innovative interventions.” Here, bold measures are necessary, the plea of the authors, as a rigorous prohibition of filter cigarettes.
smoke-free Bars were unthinkable
“a Lot of people have questioned that smoke-free Bars, Pubs or planes would be possible once”, they emphasize. Just as unthinkable today as prescribed drastic health warnings on cigarettes are boxes used to be. Novotny and colleagues warn: “If we are not able to reduce the trillion cigarette butts that contribute annually to the global waste burden, we will undermine our efforts, the world’s plastic garbage to curb, and miss the opportunity to end the global tobacco epidemic.”
anyone Who thinks that E-cigarettes could be a greener Alternative, is wrong: you not only produce e-waste, but the necessary cartridges and Liquid bottles, plastic garbage. The WHO writes: “disposable cartridges made of plastic could be the ends of the Cigarettes of the future.” More detailed studies of the disposal and, in addition, the resulting waste quantities by E-cigarettes are, however. (anf/sda)
Created: 27.10.2019, 10:16 PM
