Worldwide tobacco use kills over 7 million people each year and costs households and governments more than $1.4 trillion through health care costs and lost productivity, according to a World Health Organization report released on Wednesday and coincided with World No Tobacco Day.
The report also outlines how all aspects of tobacco production, consumption and disposal account for a confluence of negative effects on humans and the environment.
There are 1 billion smokers in the world, with 80 percent in low- and middle-income countries, WHO highlighted, adding that this high rate significantly increases the burden on health services in these countries and that children, working in tobacco fields, are at a higher risk for “green tobacco sickness,” absorbing nicotine through the handling of tobacco leaves.
“Tobacco threatens us all,” WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in a statement. “Tobacco exacerbates poverty, reduces economic productivity, contributes to poor household food choices, and pollutes indoor air.”
Tobacco farming has led to to mass deforestation since the 1970s and the technique used for farming is a monocrop, meaning it is not rotated out with other crops, draining the soil of valuable nutrients while also requiring a large amount of chemicals to promote its growth.
The report notes that little data is available on the environmental impact of the manufacturing and distribution of tobacco products but “that it may be one of the greatest sources of tobacco’s environmental damage.”
“Until recently, only vague estimates of the environmental costs of tobacco manufacturing and transport were available — but even those were ominous,” the authors wrote, citing that data from 1995 accounted for 2 million metric tons of solid waste, 300,000 metric tons of nicotine-contaminated waste and 200,000 metric tons of chemical waste.
There is no safe exposure to cigarette smoke — those who are smoking a cigarette or those being exposed to second- or third-hand smoke are all equally at risk for the negative effects of the more than 4,000 chemicals released into the air.
“Tobacco smoke pollutes indoor and outdoor environments and remains a pervasive and persistent source of toxicants long after the cigarette has been extinguished. It is estimated that in 2012, some 967 million daily smokers consumed approximately 6.25 trillion cigarettes worldwide,” the author’s write in the report.
Finally, up to two-thirds of smoked cigarettes are discarded onto the ground, the report notes, and this creates between 340 million and 680 million kilograms of litter in the world each year. The waste also contains over 7,000 toxic chemicals, the report said.
“This toxic waste ends up on our streets, in our drains and in our water. Research has shown that harmful chemicals leached from discarded butts, which include nicotine, arsenic and heavy metals, can be acutely toxic to aquatic organisms; research into their longer term effects on water supply are ongoing,” the author’s wrote.
WHO lays out its suggestions that public policy can take in reducing the amount of smokers. They include offering cessation assistance, supporting picture warnings on cigarette packages as well as mass-media campaign against smoking, bans on tobacco advertising, tax increase on tobacco products and clamping down on the illicit trade of tobacco products.
• Laura Kelly can be reached at lkelly@washingtontimes.com.
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