Tobacco pollution’s impact on low-income communities
For decades, Big Tobacco has strategically targeted California’s diverse communities with aggressive marketing and cheap products, placing an unfair burden of disease, death, and tobacco pollution on low-income and communities of color.123 While the health dangers of Big Tobacco’s products are infamous, the toxic pollution left behind in communities is less well-known. The reality is that the toxic chemicals in their products officially put them in the category of “toxic waste” and make them nearly impossible to dispose of safely.45678
While California has achieved one of the lowest tobacco use rates in the nation, our state remains one of Big Tobacco’s largest markets in the US.910 Nearly 20 percent of the five trillion cigarettes made worldwide each year are sold in California.610 That figure doesn’t include vapes, chew, nicotine pouches, or other tobacco products designed to addict people. All these toxic tobacco products flooding into our state impacts communities where these products are marketed, sold, and thrown away.
Because Big Tobacco intentionally and aggressively targets low-income communities and communities of color, a higher number of stores in these areas sell tobacco than in other areas.111213 The more stores that sell tobacco, the higher the level of tobacco pollution exposure for residents. Tobacco pollution particularly builds up around where these products are sold.2
Big Tobacco desperately wants us to believe that cigarette butts and vapes found on the ground are merely a litter problem caused by the people who use their products, and the solution is as simple as ashcans and beach cleanups.141516 But even if people who use tobacco products try to properly discard used cigarettes or vapes, it isn’t enough – tobacco products can still leach toxic waste into our environment.517 Vapes are particularly difficult to recycle or throw away safely, and most major companies are silent or vague on the best disposal methods for their own products.5 This ruthless industry uses slick PR campaigns to blame their own customers for the pollution, dodge accountability, avoid regulations, and spread outright lies.1418 Unsurprisingly, Big Tobacco claims no responsibility for the tobacco pollution its products generate.14
So, how does tobacco waste really impact Californian communities?
Cigarette butts are made of microplastic fibers and can take decades to fully degrade.1920 Left to degrade in the environment, they pollute waterways, fill up landfills, and leak toxic chemicals into the soil, posing safety hazards to our communities.2122 Microplastics from cigarette waste can contaminate our soil, food, and water.2223 Research suggests that when microplastics wind up inside of us, they are linked to intestinal damage, infertility, and DNA mutations.232425 Even if you don’t use tobacco, you are at risk of being exposed to microplastic harms.
Even if you don’t use tobacco, you are at risk of being exposed to microplastic harms.
Cigarettes aren’t the only tobacco product that creates toxic pollution. As cigarettes’ popularity has waned in recent years, Big Tobacco invested heavily in another product – vapes – hoping it would salvage profits.2627 Instead, they created a dangerous addiction and health epidemic among kids and young adults.728 And vapes have all the same environmental problems as cigarette butts – plastic pollution and toxic chemicals leaking into the environment – plus, because they’re electronic devices, they leave behind electronic waste (e-waste), which is notoriously difficult and costly to dispose of.782829 The environmental impacts of vape products are visible throughout the state, including on school campuses.
In 2019, California researchers did some local investigating, collecting tobacco, cannabis, and vape waste from a dozen high school parking lots across the San Francisco Bay Area. Vape waste made up 19 percent of the litter recovered – debris that would have been hard to find on school campuses a decade ago when vapes were so new.30 Research also shows that tobacco pollution builds up around high schools at different levels depending on the socioeconomic makeup of the students at the school.30
These discarded tobacco products – cigarette butts, vapes, e-juice pods, and even tobacco product packaging – all contribute to toxic waste pollution.22
As more research reveals how Big Tobacco pollutes our environment with its toxic products, it becomes a more urgent and serious community threat.31 Much like Californians harmed by secondhand smoke exposure, the same is true of Californians harmed by tobacco pollution – it doesn’t matter if you use tobacco products or not, you and the ones you love are being exposed. Tobacco pollution is associated with elevated levels of lead in children’s blood.3233 It may also load certain neighborhoods with unacceptably high levels of nicotine, benzene, and heavy metals.34 And these devastating impacts can last for decades.
Communities of color and low-income communities continue to bear an unreasonable burden of health impacts from pollution of all kinds – from substandard housing containing lead and asbestos, to industrial pollution and air pollution.353637 Tobacco pollution adds to already unacceptable levels of pollution. Bottom line: No one, and no place, is safe from Big Tobacco.
