Future Boy wrote:sparks wrote: Cigarette butts aren't out there running a risk of making the planet unlivable in the distant future, they just look out of place for two or three weeks until they disintegrate.
Ahem, 2 or 3 weeks? How about this (from
here):
"So what's wrong with tossing out a cigarette butt? It makes them just GO AWAY, plain and simple, right? WRONG! Did you know that cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, which persists up to ten years in the environment, far longer than it takes to destroy the internal processes of the creatures that ingest them mistakenly as food."
Just because something's synthetic doesn't make it indestructible. Cellulose acetate is actually biodegradable, and can composted. Chemically speaking, it's a slow process--however, that degredation usually occurs after the filter has disintegrated from environmental wear. On the microscopic level, in other words. Snowfall would actually -delay- environmental wear (like wind, foot and vehicle traffic), so I'm not sure what your point about the snowfall was. When you see a cigarette butt in the street, it's probably only been there a few weeks. That's why you don't see millions upon millions upon millions of them, as you would if they lasted virtually forever, as you seem to imply.
It's also a pretty neutral chemical. A bird hungry enough to eat something that smells nothing like food will probably suffer some ill effects, but it's not exactly a very serious concern--so far, I haven't see the streets flooded with dead pigeons, and I don't think it's been a major issue in the fifty-odd years filters were introduced.
If cigarette butts didn't just "GO AWAY" (which you seem to think I've said with some kind of naive, magical tone) anyone living in a city would see, as I said, more cigarette butts than we can count. In fact, we'd be dealing with them in such numbers that they -would- be a valid concern. However, you look at a busy street in a major metropolitan city and see at the very most a hundred or two at a time, even with heavy (smoking) pedestrian traffic. Why is that, do you think?
It is, however, very discourteous to leave your butts in someone's yard. I'd like to thank everyone who assumed, for the purposes of the argument, that I proposed it fine to leave your refuse in yards, public places, mailboxes, baby carriages...
Really, people, my point is that there's a difference between valid environmental concern and a concern for the visual beauty of an area. You don't leave cigarette butts where they shouldn't be for the same reason you don't leave your spare newspapers there. Sure, they'll both be rendered down to microscopic fiber within the course of a few months, but they're not pretty to look at in the meanwhile.
As for the chemical concerns, are you aware that the poisonous chemicals in burnt tobacco and tobacco smoke are common to burning vegetable matter as a whole? Do you realize that a naturally occurring (even fully necessary) forest fire produces thousands of these poisonous carcinogens in immeasurable quantity? Does no one have any concept of perspective whatsoever?
If you're looking for an objective, scientific source, the New York Whale and Dolphin Action League article you chose is probably not the best choice. The last scientific journal I saw didn't resort to caps lock and multiple exclamation points in its statements, and I question the intelligence of anyone who seriously respects an article that would. It's fluff, just like the argument it presents.
All that said? Smoking's bad for you. Don't do it. Unless you want to. Thanks.
Edit: My apologies--apparently that article was originally from a bi-weekly community college newsletter. I retract all derogatory statements made about its validity as a respectable source of reference.
You'd think from your reply that was the only point I'd made in the entire post.
