Smoke kills – all kinds, irrespective of the origin – irrespective of the end consumer! However, I wonder how many of you while reading this would dare to feel the culprit inside instead of effortlessly dropping that ash on the floor and killer clouds on the face of the environment like a dilapidated exhaust pipe.
The so-called smooth balance of the environment is in tatters, and it’s high time to think about something that should redeliver the lost glory, if you realize there is/was any, of the planet. The exhaled puffs of smoke not only damage your own body but also the environment, polluting it much like cars and industries.
Cigarettes are not only polluting the air but also land and water. How? Take a look below:
Cigarettes as Air Pollutants:
This is what you all must have already understood, still to clear things up I want to introduce some statistics in this article – Each cigarette is a blend of over 4,000 chemicals that are inhaled and then exhaled unknowingly into the atmosphere. This means that there is a massive amount of pollution released into the air everyday. Trees – the lungs of the planet – have to work hard to clear all this mess from the environment. We have to be a bit more lenient towards trees because they are the only oxygen generating sources on the planet and everyone needs to breathe to live, but no one needs to smoke to live.
Cigarettes as Land Pollutants:
The harmful effects of cigarettes do not end in the air only – millions of butts are discarded on the ground everyday. Every year California has a statewide cleanup and cigarette butts account for almost half of the waste that is collected. These are the ones that are picked up and disposed off properly still there are millions more that remain unattended.
Cigarettes as Water Pollutants:
The butts that remain unattended find their way to water streams, rivers, and lakes where fish and animals eat them by mistake and quite often they die from them. These diseased fish are also consumed by humans hence the disease enters our body. These butts also pollute water, which in turn pollutes the soil and finally damages plants.
Miscellaneous effects:
1) The land used to grow tobacco could also be put to better use like producing food for the starving children of the developing countries.
2) Tobacco crops are fragile and require farmers to spray a lot of harmful pesticides and chemicals.
3) Worldwide cigarette manufacturing requires four miles of paper per hours just for rolling and packaging that means one tree is wasted for every three hundred cigarettes produced.
Tobacco industries are unwilling to adopt better techniques for the production of cigarettes because they are already profiting in billions of dollars each year with old techniques. The best way to stop this pollution is to stop buying their products. We have to understand that together we all can make a difference.
