Supporting Sources
All 3 Reasons: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdch/2_Reasons_outdoors_382580_7.pdf Drifting tobacco smoke can trigger asthma attacks, bronchial infections, and other serious health problems in nonsmokers. For the 100 million Americans who have asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic sinusitis, emphysema, or other breathing related conditions, it makes them especially susceptible to secondhand tobacco smoke.
Even for people without these breathing conditions, breathing drifting tobacco smoke for even brief periods can be deadly. For example, the Centers for Disease Control's [CDC] warned that breathing drifting tobacco smoke for as little as 30 minutes can raise a non smoker’s risk of suffering a fatal heart attack to that of a smoker.
Cigarette butts discarded by smokers constitute the overwhelming majority of litter on beaches, as well as in many other public places like parks, playgrounds, and sidewalks.
Smoking bans have been shown to substantially reduce the litter and therefore the costs of cleaning up beaches and other outdoor areas, as well as to improve the overall appearance and attractiveness of the area.
Discarded cigarettes – designed to continue to burn for several minutes when dropped and not puffed upon – are a major fire hazard, threatening surrounding outdoor public areas.
Young children playing in the sand at a beach or in playground sandbox may be tempted to put cigarette butts – which contain concentrated amounts of carcinogens and
Smoking also causes some serious respiratory diseases. Emphysema is a disease that robs a person of their ability to breathe. This disease is terminal and it kills you. It destroys a little bit of your lungs at a time so you don’t even realize there is problem. Patients who have emphysema can survive for many years with the help of oxygen tanks and special breathing exercises. Everyday activities, like shopping, cleaning, or exercising are some things that you can’t do in the later stages of emphysema. Elaine Landau says in her book “Cigarettes” that one cigarette lessens a smokers life by 7 minutes. Overall smoking is very dangerous a deadly it causes over 300,000 deaths a year in the United States. So if you’re ever offered one just remember how dangerous it is even if it only lessens your life by 7 minutes. However you don’t have to smoke to be harmed by cigarette. This leads us to the effects of secondhand smoke. Inhaling smoke from others is called passive smoking.
People who inhale second hand smoke on a regular basis are at the same risk as smokers. The risks include cancer, emphysema and heart disease. Secondhand smoke is a serious health hazard that can lead to illness and premature death in children and non-smoking adults. According to American Cancer Society “secondhand smoke (SHS) is also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). SHS is a mixture of two forms of smoke that come from burning tobacco. The two forms are Side stream smoke which is smoke from the lighted end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar and Mainstream smoke which is the smoke exhaled by a smoker.” Tobacco smoke is a mixture of gases and particles, it has about 250 harmful chemicals and 60 are known to cause cancer. Reynolds American is the second largest cigarette maker in the world. They have recently changed one of their
This is also expensive for the communities as they have to spend millions of taxpayer dollars for clean-up. As it stands, human beings do not appear to reconize this problem along with the laws on the books do not address the problem. Sure, there are laws against littering however, it does not seem to have solved anything to stop or even curb the collateral damage of cigarette butts. Worldwide, they think there are about 845,000 tons of cigarette butts discarded each year as harmful liter (News Center SDSU ). They are saying there may be over three billion cigarette butts thrown on the ground just around the San Francisco Bay Area every year alone. The filters are basically not easily biodegradable so the butts pose a long-term threat to wild animals and even small
It is not uncommon to see some visitors using tobacco products such as cigarettes and cigars while they visit the parks. Many of these visitors who smoke, tend to toss out their cigarette butts without a care. They assume that it’s small therefore harmless. (See Figure 1 on page 2). Other common assumptions are that it will burn out on its own or that park maintenance crews will collect them at some point. Additionally, many smokers incorrectly believe that cigarette butts are not litter at all. But on the contrary they can be quite harmful to the environment. According to Luther King, (King, 2013) most Cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate which could take more than 10 years to disintegrate.” Cellulose Acetate is a form of plastic found in cigarette filters that can contaminate soil and waterways, it can even harm and kill living organisms. Moreover, if left to decay it can degrade the surrounding eco systems (Moss, 2009). Ten years is a very long time to wait for something to break down on its own. Many people will even bypass the ash receptacles that can be found throughout the park choosing to flick them onto the ground or in waterways. Putting the lives of other park visitors as risk as well as the lives of local
Secondhand smoke, also referred to as environmental tobacco smoke, primarily comes from cigars and cigarettes The effects of breathing in secondhand smoke is equivalent to smoking a cigarette. In addition, the chemicals released by cigarettes and cigars contain many poisons, such as benzene, butane, ammonia, toluene, and hydrogen cyanide (American Lung Association). These poisons from secondhand smoking are prevalent in children’s surroundings, causing them to breathe these toxins in homes, day cares, and cars. Children who are exposed to these toxins are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, acute respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia, otitis
Smoking can cause fires in your house, forests, and other places just because of a cigarette butt. This happens because people
A recent study has shown the the toxic chemical, nicotine, can pass from the air or smoky clothes into our bloodstream from our skin. Secondhand smoke particles can linger in a room and on clothes for hours. This means that if your are in a room where someone is smoking or vaping, then you’re absorbing the smoke and nicotine through your skin, as well as your lungs. This can cause illness especially for kids and teens, because nicotine is toxic. It has been used as a pesticide and many times it can kill or sicken people that are exposed to too much of it. Researches did a study and sat in a room full of tobacco smoke but breathed clean air and when their urine was tested it had 570 micrograms of nicotine or about 5 cigarettes worth. The same
Have you ever noticed as you're walking the amount of cigarette butts that litter the ground? On the sidewalk, in the dirt, in the bushes, in a parking lot, on the beach, near a river, or even surrounding a trash can. Probably not, if you weren't really paying attention or because you honestly didn't care, but you should. Although cigarette butts may seem harmless, they're just as dangerous as an actual cigarette. They have the same toxins as a cigarette integrated into their filter, which can harm and kill unsuspecting animals. The littering of cigarette butts must stop, we must begin to take measures to prevent these small cylinder looking pieces of paper from destroying our environment.
The Centers for Disease Control's warned that breathing drifting tobacco smoke for as little as 30 minutes can raise a non smoker’s risk of suffering a fatal heart attack to that of a smoker.
Leftover cigarettes pollute beaches and affect marine animals. Cigarette butts left and thrown onto the beaches by irresponsible and ignorant smokers make the beaches dirty and unattractive to people. This can have a lot of negative effects. One such example is that it is hard for the people to clean and dispose of cigarette leftovers, as they are small and more likely to be washed away into the water. Beach goers, families, and tourists are also affected as nobody wants to go on a polluted beach. There are already a lot of pollutants that contributes to the destruction of the beaches, such as oil spills, chemicals coming from factories, human wastes which are more prominent in less developed countries, and so on. Cigarettes are no exception to that, they not only makes the beaches unattractive to the people who go there, but they also have negative impacts on the marine
You do not have to be an active smoker to experience the harmful effects of smoke. Breathing in the smoke of active smokers is enough to cause you serious health issues. Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other toxic chemicals causing them serious health issues. Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke damages their organs, mainly the lungs and brain.
Cigarettes are made of harmful chemicals that can cause illnesses. McDonald states Sapkota’s, an environmental health scientist at the University of Maryland and Yale University major in Public Health, research on cigarette’s bacterial content showed “signs of germs that causes pneumonia, food poisoning, and urinary infections” (42).Tobacco is consist of over 4,000 chemicals that can make the smoker extremely ill. By touching the cigarette both the
Walking in cities like Portland can be enjoyable and fun. It is entertaining to explore a city by walking through its streets, and appreciating the view of the high towers while enjoying the gentle breezes traveling between those buildings. However, getting hit by a smoke fog is a mood killer and can be toxic. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that, "Cigarette smoking causes about one of every five deaths in the United States each year, More than 480,000 deaths annually" (2014). Smoking in public is a noticeable problem that Portland undoubtedly suffers from every day. People get affected by this issue, especially when it is harmful to humans from seniors to children; even unborn babies can face high risks from it. Avoiding smoke, inhaling and exhaling a good quality air is not a choice anymore. Many people say smoking should be banned, but the idea of banning it is far from reality considering how it can be addictive, but the smokers' smoke and the pedestrians' lungs could be isolated from contacting each other for sure. Countless simple solutions can help solve the problem. The government has the authority to take actions to reduce or eliminate this issue entirely by issuing laws. Signing smokers to special anti-smoking programs can discourage them from smoking. Placing smoking booths on the streets like the ones in airports could be useful, effective and would not be an alien idea for such an urban, modern city.
The majority of people throw their cigarette buds onto the ground after smoking, this can cause countless problems to many different living things. For example, wild animals could think the cigarette butt is food and eat it. The animal cannot digest the buds which can make the animal sick and it could lead to fatal circumstances. Cigarette butts do not decompose which can lead the buds getting carried into our water systems and it can contaminate our water. In 2005 alone 135 million pounds of cigarette butts were dumped in the U.S. (Cigarette Butts Are Toxic Waste1. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2015, from http://www.tobaccofreeca.com/smoking-problem/impact/environment/). This amount of trash on a college campus would give the campus an unappealing appearance. Air pollution from cigarettes is greater than a diesel car exhaust. Smoking is the silent killer of our
There are many dangerous side effects of smoking such as cancer, lung disease, heart failure and much more. There are also some minor effects such as yellow teeth, nicotine stains on fingers, bad breath and your home and body can constantly smell of smoke. Smoking is not only a danger to you but can be to others as well through passive smoking. Inhaling other peoples smoke can cause dizziness, eye irritation, headaches, coughing, nausea and sore throat. It also increases the risk of cot deaths and if a pregnant woman smokes it can affect the baby's development.