Discarded cigarette butts are polluting waterways with a significant amount of microplastics, according to a new study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics.

What's happening?

A team of scientists from the University of Buffalo tested how cigarette filters reacted when immersed in water over 10 days, using three scenarios: still water, moderately moving water, and more intense moving water.

They found that upon initial contact with water, a cigarette filter released about 24 microfibers within 20 seconds, regardless of water flow rate. 

By day 10, a single filter could release 63 to 144 microfibers, depending on water movement.

Using this data, the researchers estimated that discarded cigarette filters release between 71 million and 1.4 billion microfibers into New York State's waterways every day. 

The authors called these "conservative estimates" and extrapolated their findings to direct exposure.

Why is this concerning?

This study highlighted an often-overlooked public health concern associated with cigarettes: microplastics. 

Microplastics are an emerging field of research with grave implications for human and planetary health. 

"Direct release of pre-contaminated microfibers is unique — we typically consider microplastics problematic because of the chemicals they adsorb in the environment, but these are released with contamination," said the study's corresponding author, John D. Atkinson. 

"You get both physical pollution of the fibers and chemical pollution of everything that's stuck to them. In a way, this is a new 'bad thing' associated with cigarettes."

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Discarded cigarette butts also release heavy metals, nicotine, and other toxins into the environment. According to the World Health Organization, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are tossed into the environment each year, making them the most littered item on the planet.

Smoking cigarettes is linked with a number of well-documented, serious health concerns.

"Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, and is a main cause of lung cancer and COPD," the American Lung Association warned. "It also is a cause of coronary heart disease, stroke and a host of other cancers and diseases."

What's being done about it?

Microplastics are environmentally pervasive, but scientists are discovering promising cleanup methods; one group of researchers is experimenting with biochar, a farm waste product, to remove microplastics from soil. 

On the consumer side, companies are doing the same, like Esah Tea, which has introduced microplastics-free tea bags.

Microplastics in cigarette butts are a compelling new incentive for smokers to break the habit, but there are other ways to limit direct exposure.

Simply using less plastic day to day and replacing your most-used items with plastic-free alternatives can drastically reduce microplastic ingestion and inhalation.

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