Cigarette butts can contribute to wildfires

You may have seen an area of burned grass in the medians of our highways and interstates. A cigarette butt tossed out of a car window most likely caused this. It was probably an absent minded thing as many people do not even consider it litter. Here are some facts everyone should know about cigarette butts:

Dropped cigarette butts have been the cause of numerous house and apartment fires, as well as 4,500 grass and brush fires per year, and some of the largest, most destructive forest fires.

Fires caused by cigarette butts claim the lives of 1,000 people and injure 3,000 people each year.

Cigarette butts contain Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic, Formaldehyde, Acetone, and Benzene. The nicotine trapped inside 200 cigarette butts is enough to kill an adult human. These chemicals and compounds get washed out of the filter and into our water when it rains.

Ninety percent of cigarette butts are dropped within 10 feet of an ashtray, and 80% of butts on the ground find their way into our water systems and detract from the quality of our drinking water.

The filters are made from a type of plastic and take up to 25 years to biodegrade.

There are over 176,000,000 pounds of discarded butts in the United States each year. 4.5 trillion butts are littered yearly world wide.

More than 100 young children per year become very sick after ingesting cigarette butts that are discarded on the ground.

Cigarette butts have also been found in the stomachs of dead fish, sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals.

The Department of the Navy works hard on pollution prevention, health and safety, storm water controls, and other environmental regulations. Please help us protect our Natural Resources and set an example for others to follow. Please discard cigarette butts properly both on and off base. There are companies that sell "pocket ashtrays" that will safely and cleanly hold the filters until they can be disposed of in a proper container. If your car does not have an ashtray, you can put an empty soda can with a little water in your car's cup holder.

We should all take a moment to think about the impacts we have on our environment. If you would not throw an item on the floor in your home, then it should not be thrown on the ground outside.