IF CANCER and heart disease weren鈥檛 reason enough to quit cigarettes, smokers
might feel a twinge of conscience at two new reports highlighting how tobacco
endangers the environment and public safety.
Both reports are published in the latest issue of the British Medical
Association journal Tobacco Control. In the first (vol 8, p 18), Helmut
Geist, a forestry scientist formerly at the University of D眉sseldorf,
reviews data on forestry and tobacco farming from individual countries and the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He estimates that tobacco farmers clear
200 000 hectares of forest and woodland every year. More than 90 per cent of the
land is in the developing world and this accounts for nearly 5 per cent of the
deforestation each year in the worst affected countries鈥攚hich include
South Korea, China, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Uruguay.
鈥淭he hypothesis promoted by the tobacco industry that no negative effects
such as deforestation are attributable to tobacco must be challenged,鈥� says
Geist.
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The problem is two-pronged: tobacco growers target virgin forest land because
the soil contains more nutrients and then chop down even more forest to supply
the wood they need to cure the crop and build the barns for storing their
harvests.
In another paper that has not yet been published, Geist calculates that
global tobacco production consumes more than 11 million tonnes of wood each
year.
Olivier Dubois of the International Institute for Environment and Development
in London says we need to take a closer look at the issue. 鈥淭he key question is
whether farmers and their employers would be doing just as much damage if they
weren鈥檛 working on the tobacco farms,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e need an environmental impact
补蝉蝉别蝉蝉尘别苍迟.鈥�
In the second paper (p 67), Andrew McGuire of the Trauma Foundation based at
the San Francisco General Hospital accuses the tobacco industry of dragging its
heels over introducing a 鈥渇ire-safe鈥� cigarette that would slash the death toll
from tobacco-related house fires.
In the US, 1000 people die and many more are injured each year in fires
started by cigarettes鈥攎ore than in fires with any other single cause, such
as electrical faults or arson. Yet McGuire says that from 1987 onwards, the
tobacco giant Philip Morris tested cigarettes that were less likely to ignite
upholstery and mattresses.
According to internal company memos, the new cigarette received similar
scores as ordinary Marlboro cigarettes in taste tests, although its overall
acceptability to smokers was judged to be lower. The fire-safe cigarette has so
far not reached the market.