Cigarette Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Aquatic life health concerns === In the 2006 International Coastal Cleanup, cigarettes and cigarette butts constituted 24.7% of the total collected pieces of garbage, over twice as many as any other category, which is not surprising seeing the numbers in the table above of waste produced each year.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/DocServer/Final_ICC_report_2007_release.pdf?docID=2841 |title=International Coastal Cleanup 2006 Report, page 8 |access-date=November 13, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081126224658/http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/DocServer/Final_ICC_report_2007_release.pdf?docID=2841 |archive-date=November 26, 2008 }}</ref> Cigarette filters contain the chemicals filtered from cigarettes and can leach into waterways and [[water supply|water supplies]].<ref>{{cite web| title=CigaretteLitter.org| url=http://www.cigarettelitter.org| access-date=May 28, 2007| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070522143853/http://www.cigarettelitter.org/| archive-date=May 22, 2007}}</ref> The toxicity of used cigarette filters depends on the specific tobacco blend and additives used by the cigarette companies. After a cigarette is smoked, the filter retains some of the chemicals, and some of those are considered [[carcinogenic]].<ref name="Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology" /> When studying the environmental effects of cigarette filters, the various chemicals that can be found in cigarette filters are not studied individually, due to the complexity of doing so. Researchers instead focus on the whole cigarette filter and its LD<sub>50</sub>. LD<sub>50</sub> is defined as the lethal dose that kills 50% of a sample population. This allows for a simpler study of the toxicity of cigarette filters. One recent study has looked at the toxicity of smoked cigarette filters (smoked filter + tobacco), smoked cigarette filters (no tobacco), and unsmoked cigarette filters (no tobacco). The results of the study showed that for the LD<sub>50</sub> of both marine topsmelt (''[[Atherinops affinis]]'') and freshwater [[fathead minnow]] (''Pimephales promelas''), smoked cigarette filters + tobacco are more toxic than smoked cigarette filters, but both are severely more toxic than unsmoked cigarette filters.<ref>{{Cite journal |vauthors=Slaughter E, Gersberg RM, Watanabe K, Rudolph J, Stransky C, Novotny TE |title=Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish |journal=Tobacco Control |volume=20 |issue=Suppl_1 |pages=25β29 |date=2011 | doi = 10.1136/tc.2010.040170 |pmid=21504921 |pmc=3088407 }}</ref> {| class="wikitable" |+ LD<sub>50</sub> of cigarette filters to marine life (cigarette per liter) ! Cigarette type !! Marine topsmelt !! Fathead minnow |- | Smoked cigarette filter (smoked filter + tobacco) || 1.0 || 1.0 |- | Smoked cigarette filters (no tobacco) || 1.8 || 4.3 |- | Unsmoked cigarette filters (no tobacco) || 5.1 || 13.5 |} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page