Up in Smoke

Last week I posted a blog where I talked about cigarette butts as a pollutant being my main focus of research. Mrs. Woodall asked me a series of questions that would help in my research. She asked me –“exactly what chemicals would be worthy of analysis? What actual chemicals are generally released into water/sediment? which ones are most toxic? and to which organisms? and at what levels?”

 

Cigarettes contain over 165 toxic chemicals and during the production of cigarettes from start to finish they have the potential to introduce over 4000 chemicals into the environment. This is taking into consideration the pesticides and fertilizer used on the tobacco, the flavoring or additives added to the tobacco, and the chemicals used to preserve the cigarette.

Marine Topsmelt

 

 

Freshwater Flat Head Minnow

After searching the internet for hours trying to find a list of chemicals and their potential affects on the environment I decided to revisit the test that was performed on  the marine topsmelt (Atherinops affinis) and the freshwater fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) that I mentioned in last weeks blog.

In the experiment the researchers tested three different cigarette leachates:

The first leachates where with smoked cigarette butts, with 1–2 cm of remnant tobacco left intact with the filter, one test with artificially smoked cigarettes and one with naturally smoked cigarettes

 The second leachates where from smoked cigarette filters with all tobacco removed. This was performed three times, once with artificially smoked cigarettes and twice with naturally smoked cigarettes

The third leachates used where unsmoked cigarette filters with no tobacco, this test was only ran once.

Before introducing the minnows the researchers allowed the cigarette butts to soak for 24 hours and prepared several samples that were less concentrated (dilution is the solution to pollution right?) Each concentration was replicated four times and tested with 5 fish each making a total of 20 fish per concentration level. The test ran for 96 hours and the results where that there was a 50% mortality in the fish species.

The results between the artificially smoked cigarettes and naturally smoked cigarettes with tobacco remnants didn’t show much of a variation; however the artificially smoked cigarettes without tobacco were found to be more toxic than their naturally smoked counterparts. The reasons for this outcome was stated as “unclear”, maybe when the cigarette is being smoked naturally the person absorbs more of the toxins through the filter? At the end of the experiment it was found that toxicity increased significantly from unsmoked filters, no tobacco to smoked filters no tobacco to smoked filters with tobacco remnants. This leads me to believe that most of the toxins that result in fish mortality are found in the tobacco and not just the filter.

Some of the possible causes of toxicity that the researchers list are pesticides, nicotine which can be used as an insecticide,  Ethylphenol which has been shown to be capable of building up in aquatic organisms, and chemical additives such as ammonia; as well as, the glues and paper that go into making the filter. Not only do these toxins affect fish but they also effect daphnids (water flea) and marine bacteria which are important to the marine environment. 

I will have to conduct more research on which chemicals are the most abundance in cigarettes and what pesticides are more commonly used on tobacco plants. Do they vary based on brand? Where the tobacco was grown? Once I can pin point a cigarettes highest concentrated toxic chemicals I will be able to research the affects that they may have on the aquatic organisms. With so many toxins found in cigarettes and the overwhelming amount of information on the internet about cigarettes I am finding it hard to find information on the specific chemicals and their concentration levels.