Musings on the Environmental Effects of Cigarettes
by ALEX POSA

I”™m guessing the vast majority of Obies worry about global warming and would consider themselves environmentalists to some extent. A large portion of Oberlin students also smoke. I don”™t have any statistics, as I started this article on Wednesday and didn”™t want to take the time or energy to create and conduct a scientifically valid survey.

Unfortunately, government anti-smoking campaigns have focused on the health effects of smoking but have ignored its detrimental effects on the environment. I did find a South Australia website called “Smoke Free Kids” that has a section on the environmental impacts of tobacco cultivation and manufacturing. This was the only government-run site I found on the topic that was easily accessible and readable.

Tobacco farming is pesticide- and nutrient-intensive, and tobacco takes approximately 11 times as much nitrogen from the soil as food crops do. Each year, 20,000 square miles of forest are cut down for firewood to cure tobacco. If the land used to grow tobacco were switched to grain production, we could feed 10 to 20 million more people.

Every year, five trillion cigarettes are smoked, and it takes one tree to produce 300 cigarettes. That works out to around 1.6 billion trees every year used to create cigarettes. One mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 a year. Assuming the average tree absorbs about 40 pounds, there are 33 million additional tons of carbon dioxide that could have been absorbed by trees used to make cigarettes. Add the 600 million trees cut down to dry tobacco, and that”™s 47 million pounds of CO2 that could have been absorbed just from trees destroyed to make cigarettes and cultivate tobacco.

Cigarette smoke releases around 3 million tons of carbon dioxide each year and 5.7 million tons of methane, or 1.5 percent of all methane emitted due to human activity. Methane has 25 times the effect on global warming as CO2, and this methane is equal to about 140 million tons of CO2. Add these statistics to the carbon from tree destruction and that”™s about 200 million tons of CO2.

The environmental raping doesn”™t stop there. Cigarette filters contain cadmium, arsenic and lead, albeit trace amounts. While students are angered to hear that Village Housing still has lead paint, smokers release lead into our soil through cigarette butts. While admittedly there are only traces of these chemicals in a single cigarette, when multiplied by 5 trillion, the amount becomes significant.

Unlike other activities that produce pollutants, smoking has not improved our lives. While we enjoy environmentally-damaging meat (although I”™m a vegan, which makes me way better than you), benefit from the increased ease of transportation via cars and planes, and enjoy a huge variety of foods from all over the world, there are few positive effects from smoking. In response to this, Obies could stop smoking. Or, they could just say screw it, complain about America”™s lax environmental regulations, and keep smoking. I”™m guessing the latter is far more likely.

A lot of people I’ve spoken to were under the impression that the filters were not plastic and were biodegradable.