Beyond its impact on public health, the tobacco industry is also a cause of major environmental damage, between mountains of pollution and emissions that contribute to climate change, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday (WHO).
The tobacco industry is one of the biggest pollution we knowexplained to AFP the WHO director for health promotion, Rüdiger Krech, presenting a report on the conclusions quite disastrous.
The document, titled Tobacco, poison for our planetlooking at the environmental footprint of the sector as a whole, from the growth of plants to the manufacture of tobacco products, including consumption and waste.
While the industry is responsible for the loss of 600 million trees, tobacco cultivation uses 200,000 acres of land and 22 billion tons of water per year, and emits approximately 84 million tons of CO.2according to the report.
Tobacco products, the most commonly discarded on the planet, contain more than 7000 chemical compounds that, when discarded, spread into the atmosphere.continued Rüdiger Krech.
Each of the 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that goes into nature each year can pollute up to 100 liters of water, he pointed out.
The health risks of tobacco are not limited to consumption and waste: nearly a quarter of tobacco growers suffer from green tobacco sickness, a form of nicotine poisoning through the skin.
In constant contact with tobacco leaves, these farmers consume the nicotine equivalent of 50 cigarettes a day, explains Mr. Krech, pointing out that the sector uses a large number of children. .
Just imagine: a 12-year-old child exposed to 50 cigarettes a dayhe concludes.
According to the report, tobacco is mostly grown in poor countries, where water and farmland are often scarce, and where these crops replace important food production.
Tobacco cultivation is also responsible for approximately 5% of deforestation worldwide, and contributes to the depletion of important water reserves.
A large portion of global greenhouse gas emissions also come from tobacco processing and transportation – the equivalent of one -fifth of the carbon footprint of air travel.
The WHO also warns about tobacco products – cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes – that contribute significantly to the accumulation of plastic pollution in the world.
Cigarette filters contain traces of microplastics, tiny fragments found in oceans around the world, including the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest in the world – making it the second largest source of plastic pollution in world. world.
Contrary to the tobacco industry’s claims, however, there is no evidence that these filters have beneficial health effects, underlined in the WHO.
The UN agency is therefore urging policymakers around the world to treat these filters as single-use plastics, and to consider banning them.
He also laments that the huge cost of cleaning up the waste of the tobacco industry is being borne by taxpayers around the world.
According to the report, China spends approximately $ 2.6 billion annually to treat wastes from tobacco products. For India, the bill is worth 766 million dollars, while Brazil and Germany must pay 200 million dollars each.
That is why the WHO insists that more countries follow the example of France and Spain by using the polluter pays principle.
For Rüdiger Krech, that matters the industry is actually paying for the damage it has created.
Source: Radio-Canada
