Cigarette butts are poisonous. They contain a mixture of over 7,000 different toxic substances like heavy metals and nicotine. After smoking, the cigarette butts are often discarded in the environment, where these poisons are washed away by the rain and then contaminate the soil and waterbodies.
A study from Berlin shows that the nicotine in cigarette butts has the potential to contaminate 1,000 liters of water, harming organisms like water fleas. The study also found out, that the amount of water-soluble nicotine in one cigarette butt is about 14 times more than the EU-limit of 0.5 milligrams per gram for hazardous tobacco waste.
On top of that, cigarette filters are made of plastic. Filters that end up in the oceans can be mistaken for food by animals such as fish, birds and marine mammals. Since the filters are not biodegradable, they break down to microplastic particles, which can then find their way back to us humans via the food chain.
Cigarette butts can also cause wildfires triggered by burning or smouldering cigarettes, that are carelessly littered in the forest. For instance, in 2017, a wildfire caused by a cigarette butt in France had run through 800 hectares of forest and in 2018, another wildfire, also caused by a cigarette butt consumed 600 hectares of forest in the USA.
So if you want to protect our environment, you should never carelessly throw away cigarette butts. Although it would be even better to not smoke at all.
Click here to read more about how tobacco is harmful to the environment.