

The Way I See It!


Cigarette Butts Contain Enough Nicotine To Kill Your Child!

Education, Health, Kids, Life, Medical, Safety, Smoking, Tips

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Here's an unknown to consumers and not talked about fact about cigarettes from the manufacturers.  The reason why tobacco plants produce nicotine is because nicotine is an insecticide.  And it is a potent one -- 50 milligrams of nicotine is enough to kill an adult human being.


When a person smokes a filtered cigarette, all of the smoke passes through the cigarette's filter and the smoker receives two or three milligrams of nicotine from the smoke that he or she inhales.  This small dose is not toxic enough and has several effects on the smoker -- it increases the smoker's heart rate for example, and causes blood vessels to constrict.


When the smoker finishes the cigarette and flicks the butt away, the butt actually contains a significant amount of nicotine trapped in the fibers of the filter -- perhaps 20 milligrams.  That is enough, it turns out, to kill your child.  If 20 milligrams of nicotine is ingested by a small child, the nicotine will cause respiratory failure and paralysis.


We all know how excited infants and toddlers are about putting everything they find in their mouths.  If you put your infant or toddler on the sidewalk, and if the child happens upon a fresh cigarette butt, and if the child does the completely normal thing of putting the butt in his or her mouth and swallowing it, then you have an emergency.  It is definitely time to call the poison control center and/or head for the emergency room, because that cigarette butt may very well be lethal.


Even if you do not smoke, someone else around does.  Most smokers are careless with the cigarette butts.  They flick them out of their cars; drop them while they walk on to the sidewalk.  That is littering.  Dangerous littering!


Your neighbor either next door or a few houses away could be a smoker. They may have a can that they use for their cigarette butts and just dump the butts in the garbage can afterwards.  You should ask them to please put them in a bag first so when the garbage trucks pickup the trash and dump it they don’t have a chance to fall out.   


Did you ever wonder sometimes how a cigarette butt makes it way in your backyard?  Many birds try to eat them thinking they are worms and just drop them.  Now your child could unknowingly and unfortunately pick it up and eat it.


I am going to ask the Mayor if they can maybe post something in one of the newsletters we get about proper disposal of them and the dangers that lurk with them.


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