July 25, 2019

Anna Murray 

A research article on the Journal of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, “Cigarette butts have adverse effects on initial growth of perennial ryegrass and white clover,” was published online July 18 by Dannielle S. Green, Bas Boots, Jaime Da Silva Carvalho, and Thomas Starkey. The authors are all researchers from the Department of Biology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), Cambridge, England.

When cigarettes discarded, filters contain a myriad of chemicals resulting from smoking tobacco and some still contain unsmoked remnants. An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered annually worldwide, the study reports, making them the earth's most pervasive anthropogenic contaminants of plastic pollution.

Lead author Dr. Dannielle Green, a senior biology lecturer at ARU, pointed out littered cigarette butts "cause serious damage to the environment". According to the study, cigarette filters reduce the germination success of grass by 10% and clover by 27% and the shoot length by 13% and 28%, respectively. Co-author Dr. Bas Boots believed the chemical composition of the filter, cellulose acetate fibers, and added chemicals, plasticizers, that is “adversely affecting the early stages of plant development."

This study warns the potential for littered cigarette filters imposing environmental threats on terrestrial ecosystems which cut down plant growth and have adverse effects on short-term primary productivity. Allison Ogden-Newton, chief executive of the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, urged: "It is time for smokers to take responsibility and bin their butts - not pollute our planet with them."

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