Dr. Doug Mader's - "To Your Pet's Health"
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Smokers, Please Be Considerate of the Environment
- Sunday, February 5, 2012
- Sunday, January 29, 2012
- Sunday, January 22, 2012
- Sunday, January 15, 2012
I think I lost a client this past week. In this economy, that is a tough pill to swallow. However, considering the situation, I can live with it.
I was in the parking lot of my hospital when a client drove up in her car. She got out and immediately tossed her cigarette butt on the ground. She then opened the back door of her car, let her dog hop out and started to walk into my office.
I said, "excuse me, but we have cigarette disposal receptacles right here next to the entrance." I pointed to the clearly marked container "Cigarettes only please!"
I got the "deer in the headlights" look from her.
"Would you please dispose of your cigarette butt in the container?" I was very polite, smiled.
She put her dog back in the car, slammed the door and walked over and picked up the butt. She then took the few steps to the disposal container and stuffed the toxic trash inside. She turned and snarled "I have never been told to pick up my cigarettes in my life!" She then spun around, marched back to her car, once again slamming the door, and drove off.
Oh, well....
Chris Belland, fellow Solares Hill columnist, championed a grass roots effort to clean up the cigarette butts along our downtown streets earlier in the year. Together with his army of volunteers they collected several hundred pounds of cigarette butts in one afternoon!
Contrary to common belief, cigarette butts are not biodegradable. The filters are made of synthetic material, cellulose acetate, that takes years to break down. These filters do what they are designed to do -- filter out the poisons and toxins in the cigarette. All of the tar and nicotine is concentrated into the fibers of the filter in the butt. When that filter is tossed, all of the toxins go with it.
Those toxins then leach out into the soil and the ground water, contaminating everything that they contact. The butts get washed out on the beaches and the nearshore waters. In their journey they get eaten by terrestial critters, birds and eventually marine species. Fish eat these butts, fish eat other animals that eat the butts, fish eat animals that are contaminated by the toxins and eventually, you go fishing and eat the fish.
Over the years, on multiple occasions, I have found cigarette butts inside dead sea turtles. I am not implying that the butts caused their death but I am stating that we know for a fact that sea turtles and other creatures do eat this toxic trash.
It has been stated that cigarette butts are the most common form of litter on beaches worldwide. Aside from the ugly appearance of the trash on our Keys' beaches, we should be seriously concerned about the toxic implications of tossing out cigarette butts into the environment.
To the client that left -- I did not mean to insult you -- I was just asking for you to be more considerate, both to me and, more importantly, to the environment.
Dr. Mader is an ABVP board certified veterinary specialist practicing in the Keys. Send your questions to Mvh525@aol.com.
William Horn, fifth grade, Gerald Adams Elementary School
Cigarette butts