One of my personal pet peeves in Negril is watching tourists sit on the beach smoking all day, poking their cigarette butts into the sand as if that made them magically disappear. There is a campaign going on to raise awareness that cigarette butts are not biodegradable, they are at least mildy toxic, and that they should be disposed of properly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/bu...xic-waste.html
Thomas E. Novotny, a professor of global health at San Diego State University, said that while no direct link had been demonstrated between littered cigarette butts and human health, the butts leach measurable amounts of cadmium, arsenic, lead and nicotine.
A single cigarette butt in a liter of water containing minnows is toxic enough to kill half of the fish within 96 hours, a standard toxicity test, according to an experiment featured in an article published in the journal Tobacco Control that Professor Novotny helped write.
“We can’t show that there’s actually human harm but we should look at it as a potential harm and prevent it from contaminating the environment,” said Professor Novotny.
Originally Posted by STRIPER
