Famous People Smoking

Cigarette litter
Cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate and are biodegradable, though depending on environmental conditions they can be resistant to degradation. Accordingly, the duration of the degradation process is cited as taking as little as one month to three years to as long as 10 to 15 years. One campaign group has suggested they are never fully biodegraded.
This variance in rate and resistance to biodegradation in many conditions is a factor in littering and environmental damage. It is estimated that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts become litter every year. In the 2006 International Coastal Cleanup, cigarettes and cigarette butts constituted 24.7 percent of the total collected pieces of garbage, over twice as many as any other category.
Cigarette butts contain the chemicals filtered from cigarettes and can leach into waterways and water supplies. The toxicity of used cigarette butts depends on the brand design because cigarette companies incorporate varying degrees of chemicals in their tobacco blends. After a cigarette is smoked, the butt is capable of retaining some of the chemicals, and parts of them are carcinogenic. The results of one study indicate that the chemicals released into freshwater environments from cigarette butts are lethal to daphnia at concentrations of 0.125 cigarette butts per liter (or one cigarette butt per 8 liter).