Cigarette toxins take deadly toll on sea life

FORT LAUDERDALE — It gives new meaning to smoked fish.

Cigarette butts — the most littered item in South Florida — are often tossed on the ground, then carried by rain through city streets and into storm drains. Eventually they end up in the ocean, where leaking toxins pose potentially deadly problems for fish and marine animals.

Last year, more than 35,000 cigarettes were found in Broward County’s waterways and 12,000 were recovered from Palm Beach County, according to the Ocean

Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup report. To cut down on that number, environmentalists this year installed trash cans with ashtrays at piers in Dania Beach, Deerfield Beach, Lake Worth, Juno Beach and Jupiter.

It appears to be working. Since the ashtrays were installed, there has been a 60 percent reduction in cigarette litter on those beaches, said Hannah Deadman, communications coordinator for Loggerhead Marine Life Center, a nonprofit sea turtle hospital in Juno Beach.

In Deerfield Beach, smoker Hector Claudio said he appreciates the move.

Dropping cigarettes on the beach, he said, is “bad for the environment, bad for tourism and bad for children. It’s just not the right thing to do.”

Once cigarettes reach the water, toxins that would normally remain trapped in leftover butts and filters leak out, exposing sea life to carbon monoxide, nicotine, pesticides and other chemicals, experts say. In addition, cigarette filters, made up of small pieces of plastic, are not biodegradable and can be accidentally ingested.

“Cigarette litter continues to be a major threat to our oceans,” Deadman said. “Various toxins often leech out into the ocean and directly impact the immune systems of sea turtles and other marine life, especially over long periods of time.”

Allison Schutes, who oversees the International Coastal Cleanup at Ocean Conservancy, said cigarette filters break down into tinier and tinier pieces of plastic.

“What we’ve seen is when small animals ingest small pieces of plastic, they can get an artificial sense of fullness,” she said. “So they stop hunting or looking for food and eventually they starve to death.”

Richard WhiteCloud, director of Sea Turtle Oversight Protection in Fort Lauderdale, recalled a day in 2010 his team helped rescue hundreds of sea turtles shocked by unusually cold temperatures. He said about 60 to 70 percent of them had foreign objects lodged in their guts, including cigarette butts.

A study from San Diego State University found that one cigarette butt, or four filters, were toxic enough to kill fish living in one liter of water. The report also stated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found some cigarettes exceed safe limits of pesticides even for humans.

There are also economic consequences associated with cigarette litter, said Tom Morales, a litter specialist with Keep America Beautiful. The more litter, the more money must be spent by local agencies on cleanup.

“Cigarettes are not the safest and healthiest things to have lying around,” he said.

AMY BETH BENNETT/STAFF FILE PHOTO Cigarette filters, made up of small pieces of plastic, are not biodegradable and can be accidentally ingested.