Climate Change, Microplastics & Fires- the EcoToll of Tobacco with the Sierra Club

Happy World No Tobacco Day! I’m breaking the tradition of releasing on the first Monday of the month because World No Tobacco Day seemed like too good a release date to pass up for today’s post.

Today marks the release of the last podcast episode of Season Four! It is hard to believe we will be entering the fifth year of Air Health Our Health next Fall. I am so excited to bring you this episode and post today because the topic actually unifies two of the major driving forces of this project. As you know, I am very worried about environmental pollution and climate change, especially having three young children. I am also very concerned on a daily basis about the air my patients breathe, in particular when it contains tobacco smoke, e-cigarette liquids, heavy metals from vape coils, and more. Again, it keeps me up at night to have kids and know how hard the tobacco industry is working to addict them and their peers. However, I can’t believe I never put together how much the tobacco industry contributes to climate change and pollution of the environment.

Earlier this year I was interviewed for the American College of Chest Physicians as part of their interest in supporting physician advocacy, and we talked about making invisible problems visible. Over the course of my conversation with the Sierra Club for this post, I could finally see so many problems that had always been before my eyes but that I don’t think I had quite recognized. In every way and at a very large scale, the tobacco industry is polluting our world and contributing to climate change. Fortunately, there are things we can do to help.

Amanda Simpson is a policy analyst with the Environmental Justice in Tobacco Control Project of the Sierra Club. She graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Environmental Science and a minor in Economics – she has worked on sustainability issues including waste tracking, reduction and education as well as environmental consulting, focused on fuels reduction, fire prevention and forest health. We had a wide-ranging conversation today about the toll of tobacco production on our environment and climate.

There are a host of ways Tobacco damages our planet. Many sources from the WHO to the Truth Initiative and more have covered them. This infographic from the Truth Initiative provides a helpful though not exhaustive summary.

I don’t think I had appreciated the massive scale of the pollution of the tobacco industry. As someone who lives in an area very prone to wildfires, I am extremely concerned about the potential of a cigarette that is left smoking or a disposable e-cigarette with an explosive lithium-ion battery sitting in a trash can and potentially causing the next massive wildfire. I took Amanda’s advice, and started looking on the ground for cigarette butts on my walks. They are everywhere! It is extra hard to see them now that I know they are made of microplastics that will further contaminate our environment, waterways and bodies..

Reflecting on this season of the podcast, as well as the seasons before, I always want to emphasize that we have to resist the tendency to put everything on one individual. It is too much. Just like we can’t blame someone addicted to nicotine for the pollution of the tobacco industry, we can’t blame somebody who uses the occasional straw or needs to drive a gas car for all of climate change. It is much more important to recognize the massive scale of vested interests that would like to keep polluting for free and keep sickening our communities and our children for profit. Our energies are best directed at ensuring that the cost for polluting or the cost for causing illness is borne by those profiting from it and not from the people that are being harmed.

Electronic devices can certainly be sold in a way that is more environmentally responsible. The company selling them could take responsibility for the entire life cycle, including meeting some kind of safety standard and ensuring that they will receive the electronic waste back and properly dispose of it, rather than having it end up in a landfill exploding and harming a garbage worker.

I have been telling my patients for decades that so-called cigarette filters are a complete marketing gimmick and don’t make cigarettes safer. But the sheer waste of that has never fully hit me before. One of the series I enjoy in medicine is a from the Journal of Hospital medicine called “Things We Do for No Reason”- aimed at reducing waste in healthcare. There is no reason for cigarette butts. They should cease to exist. All they do is pollute our community is and put more plastic in the environment.

I am going to spend a great deal of my summer and the coming year as part of a working group trying to decrease pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the healthcare sector, which is obviously where I work. We should all be trying to lessen the climate impact of our workplace- we know what is essential and what is not essential. It is especially galling to consider how much climate change and pollution is being caused by an industry that also kills the people who use its products. More importantly, we are all subsidizing that industry’s profits with our own dollars in terms of covering the healthcare costs of the people they sicken, paying to clean up wildfires after a cigarette butt or an electronic cigarette device causes one, dealing with the micro plastic pollution, and being harmed by the chemicals seeping into our environment, our bodies, and more.

But, as Ylenia Aguilar, my guest on last month’s podcast might say, we can all put our little grain of sand on the scale to make the world a healthier place for everyone…

So what can you do?

Learn more by going to the Sierra Clubs StopToxicTobaccoWaste.org . If you go to their policy tabs page, you can see a host of ideas on how to decrease the toll of tobacco pollution in your area
With Wildfire season coming, consider actions on e-cig safety. For example, ensure devices sold in your area meet Underwriter Laboratories (UL) Standard 8139 at a minimum, which promotes lithium-ion battery safety. Ensure that your state HAS a tobacco retail license program, and make sure it includes safe disposal of e-cigarettes
Having any kind of electronic device thrown in a trash can especially with a Lithium-Ion battery is obviously a bad idea in general. Consider advocating for a ban on disposable electronic inhalation systems.
Advocate for a ban on selling cigarettes with cigarette butts. They are a plastic that don’t make cigarettes safer for the user, and they increase microplastics likely in the body of the smoker and certainly in our environment.
Consider a donation to the Sierra Club, to support the work they do in helping the environment in all ways, including keeping it free from tobacco waste.