New Study finds Cigarettes are more dangerous than Diesel fumes

Its nothing new that second hand smoke is dangerous. Its nothing new that second hand smoke contains particles that can damage your lungs. However, the fact that it is 10 TIMES more dangerous than diesel exhaust is pretty shocking to me!

I have noticed more and more people smoking in door ways as I walk down the streets of SF. The State of California has a law that says people can not smoke within 15 feet of an entrance or exit to a public building or within restaurants and bars, but unless someone is standing there enforcing the rule, very few people respect it. I have never heard of anyone being ticketed for this behavior, nor have I heard of any property owner being ticketed for allowing this behavior. Walking down the street I do notice that I am holding my breath a lot.

The following article is an interesting start to how this second hand smoke affects people walking through it and is pretty shocking, but it does leave some questions in my mind. The article states that cigarette smoke has many more particulates than diesel fumes, but that they are short lived in the environment. What constitutes a short life? What happens to the particulates once the dangerous has subsided? What is the most effective way to protect against the effects? How quickly do plants recover? Do the chemicals remain in the soil or on the pavement? Can the chemicals combine with the car exhaust and other chemicals to create a longer-lived or more dangerous chemical in the environment? Finally, this is one of the important aspects of environmental dangers to be sure, but what about the cigarette butts? What effects do those and the chemicals trapped within have on the environment?

Some of these questions were clearly not within the scope of this study, but are questions that I will actively search for answers to as I continue my project, "City Butts".

Cigarettes more polluting than diesel exhaust

11:20 24 August 2004 by Gaia Vince
The air pollution emitted by cigarettes is 10 times greater than diesel car exhaust, a small Italian study finds.

Researchers compared the particulate matter in the exhaust fumes from a modern car engine, fuelled with low-sulphur diesel, and in cigarette smoke. Three smouldering cigarettes produced a 10-fold increase in air particles compared to those produced by the idling vehicle.

"I was very surprised. We didn't expect to find such a big difference in the particulate matter produced," says Giovanni Invernizzi from the Tobacco Control Unit of Italy's National Cancer Institute in Milan, who led the study.

Ivan Vince, an air pollution expert from Ask Consultants in London, UK, says the findings are reasonable. He notes that cigarettes give off a lot more respirable particulates than the new generation of low-sulphur diesels, which help cut particulate emissions.

Smouldering cigarettes

Invernizzi and colleagues conducted their controlled experiment in a private garage in the small Alpine town of Chiavenna, which enjoys a particularly low level of air pollution.

The car used was 2002 Ford Mondeo turbo diesel with a two-litre engine, and had been on the road for six months. It was left idling in the closed garage for 30 minutes while a portable analyser took particulate air samples every two minutes.

The garage was then aired for four hours, after which the doors were re-closed and three filter cigarettes were burned sequentially over a total of 30 minutes.

The portable analyser showed that 10 times as many pollutant particulates were released in the cigarette smoke as the diesel fumes. And the comparative pollution levels for the tiniest particulates - the most dangerous to health - were even greater.

Eye damage

"The tiny particulates, less than 2.5 micrometres, are able to penetrate right into the alveoli in the lungs, where the carcinogens do the most damage," Vince says.

"Most of the chemicals emitted from cigarettes are very short-lived and so they mostly damage the local environment. For example, aldehydes damage plants and peoples' eyes and respiratory tract," he notes. Nitric oxide, also produced by cigarettes, is the culprit in photochemical smog and drives ozone formation in cities.

"But with more and more people being made to smoke outside and in doorways, the external environmental effects must surely rise," Vince told New Scientist.

Invernizzi is hoping his results will provide a new weapon in the fight against teenage smoking. "Adolescents in Milan campaign against pollution and for a better environment - often with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths. We can show them that smoking also harms the environment."

Journal reference: Tobacco Control (vol 13, p 219)