Adeze Ojukwu

World Health Organization(WHO), Tuesday, said the tobacco industry causes eight million deaths, globally.

WHO chided the industry industry, for damaging both the environment and human health, saying “it needs to be more accountable for the destruction it causes.”

The United Nations(UN) agency, stated this in a statement, to mark this year's World No Tobacco Day(WNTD).

The date, is commemorated annually on May 30, to raise public awareness about the dangers associated with smoking.

The theme of this edition was “Poisoning our planet,” with special focus on public and media activities aimed at tackling tobacco use and addiction, particularly among youths and children.

The UN agency revealed that smoking “costs the world more than eight million human lives every year. As well as the human costs, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water, and 84 million tonnes of CO2 are used in the production of tobacco.”

“When improperly disposed of, cigarette butts are a form of plastic pollution that can harm marine life and poison waters.”

“Most of the environmental cost falls on low-and-middle-income countries, where water and farmland are used to grow tobacco plants, instead of for food production, which is often desperately needed,” it noted.

Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO, said “tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded.”

“Roughly 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, soil and beaches every year.”

Hence WHO urged “policy-makers to treat cigarette filters the same, as any other single-use plastic, and consider banning them, to protect public health and the environment.’

“Despite tobacco industry marketing, there is no evidence that filters have any proven health benefits.”



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https://devcomradar.org/no-tobacco-day-smoking-causes-8-million-deaths-annually-worldwide-who/

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