Whitten
English 102
5 October 2015
Smoking Cigarettes and Its Consequences Cigarettes have been in existence for thousands of years and depending on the state which a person resides in, it can have many negative consequences. Tobacco, in general, throughout the world is earliest available at the age of eighteen years old. Tobacco is closely related to cigarettes by being one of the main components along with nicotine. Cigarettes is an extremely profitable business and brings in billions of dollars of revenue and profits. Cigarettes can have effects ranging from simple irritability to lung cancer and heart disease and these effects have a huge impact on the body of the user. In today’s society, smoking has a huge negative impact …show more content…
One of them being the disposal of cigarette butts. Cigarette butts are composed of a material known as cellulose. Cellulose is a material found in trees and many other fibrous plants. Cellulose is a fiber that is extremely hard to digest and only a few animals can actually digest it. Though animals do not have any true relevance towards this subject, the environment has a significant relevance. Cellulose is such a hard substance to break down and when thrown out on the ground the butts just sit there and are left to Mother Nature to dispose of. Approximately 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts are disposed of as waste every year on Earth (McDonald 7). This is extremely dangerous not only to just the area where the butts are but also to the surrounding areas. Whenever it rains the chemicals contained in the cigarettes are released into the environment. These chemicals can cause water pollution and can even affect the quality of the wildlife. This not only can destroy the trees, plants, and soil but it can also affect the lives of the animals who heavily rely on plants as a food source. Also cigarettes that have not been fully extinguished and are thrown from a car or a person walking can have severe consequences. A forest fire from a single cigarette can cause devastation to a single region and can range from a couple acres being burned to a complete region being deforested. Much cigarette litter is found all around the grounds. For example, walking across the beaches, cigarette butts are found all in the grains of the sand and this is extremely dangerous when the tide consumes the butts and takes the butts into the waters. This is very dangerous and unsafe for the aquatic life. When all the dangerous chemicals produced within cigarettes are released into the water or ground, if an animal