Addis Ababa, Jun 1, 2022(Walta) – The World Health Organization (WHO) revealed yesterday new information on the extent to which tobacco damages both the environment and human health, calling for steps to make the industry more accountable for the destruction it is causing.
In a press release the organization sent to the media with the World No Tobacco Day, the WHO Director of Health Promotion, Dr. Ruediger Krech quoted as said that the tobacco industry costs the world more than 8 million human lives annually. The industry also costs 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water, and 84 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
Dr. Krech further noted that the majority of tobacco is grown in low-and-middle-income countries, where water and farmland are often desperately needed to produce food for the region. Instead, they are being used to grow deadly tobacco plants, while more and more land is being cleared of forests.
The WHO report ‘Tobacco: Poisoning our planet’ highlights that the industry’s carbon footprint from production, processing, and transporting tobacco is equivalent to one-fifth of the carbon dioxide produced by the commercial airline industry each year, further contributing to global warming.
“Tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded. Roughly 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, soil, and beaches every year.”
Accordingly, products like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and e-cigarettes also add to the build-up of plastic pollution. Cigarette filters contain microplastics and make up the second-highest form of plastic pollution worldwide. Despite tobacco industry marketing, there is no evidence that filters have any proven health benefits. WHO calls on policy-makers to treat cigarette filters as what they are, single-use plastics, and consider banning cigarette filters to protect public health and the environment.
Moreover, the costs of cleaning up littered tobacco products fall on taxpayers, rather than the industry creating the problem. Each year, this costs China roughly 2.6 billion USD and India roughly 766 million USD. The cost for Brazil and Germany comes in at over 200 million USD.
Countries like France and Spain and cities like San Francisco, California in the USA have taken a stand. Following the Polluter Pays Principle, they have successfully implemented ‘extended producer responsibility legislation’ which makes the tobacco industry responsible for clearing up the pollution it creates.
WHO urges countries and cities to follow this example, as well as give support to tobacco farmers to switch to sustainable crops, implement strong tobacco taxes (that could also include an environmental tax), and offer support services to help people quit tobacco.
World No Tobacco Day is marked on 31 May every year.