I have just come from town. On leaving
home I had in mind to take a shot of a burning cigarette for this post. I
failed to do that. I have eventually managed to get an image to accompany this
post. This post is going to try and look at the negative effect of cigarette
smoke on the natural environment. You may know that automobile exhaust and
factory funnels release gases into the atmosphere which have contributed to
climate change. What about cigarette smoke? Cigarette smoke is the smoke a
cigarette emits when lighted or the smoke a smoker exhales after drawing on a
cigarette.
To know how cigarette smoke negatively
affects the environment, we should first know what constitutes cigarette smoke.
Cigarette smoke contains thousands of toxins. Of the toxins, some are regarded
as air pollutants and some are said to be human and animal carcinogens (substances
that produce cancer). Also, present in the smoke is radioactive material.
Cigarette smoke releases carbon
dioxide and methane into the air. Both gases are greenhouse gases. If you know
a little about global warming and climate change then I suppose you know how
notorious greenhouse gases have become. It should also, right away, give you a
hint as to what cigarette smoke is doing to the environment. Greenhouse gases
released into the atmosphere, by, in this instance cigarette smoke, traps heat
in the lower atmosphere raising the mean temperature of planet Earth. The
result and manifestation of this phenomenon are heat waves, melting glaciers,
rising water levels, drought etc. When there is a flood and your home is filled
with water, making it uninhabitable, that is just a small scale of what can
happen to planet Earth as a whole eventually, by the trigger of gases in the smoke
of cigarette. Remember that we don’t have the technology and feasibility to
escape a destroyed Earth, to another planet.
This is just one aspect of the dangers
of cigarette smoke to the natural environment. So what do we do to reverse this
trend to sustain a clean and balanced natural environment?
You probably have not looked at cigarette
smoke in this light! This post is presenting to you an opportunity to rethink
your position as a cigarette smoker.
The Western world is doing well in
reducing the number of cigarette smokers, while the number of smokers in the
developing world is on the increase. The developing world ought to learn from
the Western world.
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