Smoked cigarette butts: Unignorable source for environmental microplastic fibers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148384Get rights and content

Abstract

The pollution of microplastics and their potential environmental hazards have attracted considerable attention of the public. Cigarette butts, composed of cellulose acetate, are one of the most common plastic pollutants in the environment. Of all the litter that is discarded at will, cigarette butts are the most acceptable. Cigarette butts are dangerous pieces of plastic, but are usually not handled properly and consist of more than 15,000 detachable strands of plastic fiber. Discarded cigarette butts may be carried into rivers and lakes, and finally into the ocean. The plastic fibers will continuously release microplastic fibers into the environment. About 300,000 tons of potential microplastic fibers may enter the aquatic environment from this source per annum. Additionally, toxic substances, such as nicotine, carcinogenic tar, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, have strong toxic effect, which will cause serious damage to aquatic organisms. However, the mechanism and rate of microplastic fibers release from smoked cigarette butts and the joint toxicity of microplastic fibers and toxic pollutants to aquatic organisms are still in the initial stage. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the mechanism of cigarette butts releasing microplastic fibers, the potential impact on the environment and possible measures to reduce the impacts of cigarette butt litter. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential sources of smoked cigarette butts as environmental fiber microplastics and the potential ecological effects of the released microplastic fibers on the ecosystem. In addition, some ways which could help to tackle problem of smoked cigarette butts pollution have also been proposed.

Section snippets

Problems of microplastics and cigarette butts

Microplastic pollution has been becoming one of the focuses of attention all over the world, because this environmental issue is making sustainability more and more complicated. With the increasing attention of marine microplastics, how to control the daily life garbage into the environment has been concerned. Although how to quantify marine plastics and microplastics is still a great challenge, researchers have estimate that about 4.8–12.7 million tons of plastic waste flow into the ocean

Smoked cigarette butts as an un-ignorable source for microplastic fibers

Cigarette butts are usually made of cellulose acetate plastic, and one filter is usually consists of 15,000 strands of fibers (Novotny et al., 2009). Most people misunderstand the composition of the cigarette filter, and many smokers believe it is biodegradable in the natural environment. However, this is not the case. Additives and suitable degradation conditions can accelerate the decomposition and subsequent further degradation of cigarette butts. Unfortunately, nevertheless, the complete

Impact of microplastic fibers and pollutants released from smoked cigarette filters on organisms

Leachate is often used to study the potential threat of cigarette butts to aquatic organisms and the environment, and almost all studies on the toxicity of butts to living species have reported negative effects (Rebelein et al., 2021; Wright et al., 2015). Evidence has shown that a single smoked cigarette butt can leach enough pollutants to pollute about 1000 L of water (Green et al., 2014), which is enough to show the harm of cigarette butt to the environment. Booth et al. (2015) had studied

Ways forward

Cigarette butts as an easily neglected source of environmental microplastic fibers seems obvious. Unfortunately, the public pay few attentions to these microplastic fibers, so greater public education and awareness is the necessary step. Throwing cigarette butts in life is just as an example of littering. There are a large number of microplastic fibers in the global seafloor (Woodall et al., 2014), and the microplastic fibers from cigarette butts may account for a large proportion of these

Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare regarding this article.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial supports from National Natural Science Foundation of China (U20A20323, 51521006, 51579095 and 51378190).

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