Luckily for me, the subject that I have focused on for Boot camp-Cigarette Butts polluting our beaches and bays- is one that I have an abundance of sources to chose from.

This  past summer, Surfrider San Diego had a big chapter meeting and the  featured speaker was Dr. Tom Novotny, a Professor at the Graduate School  of Public Health at San Diego State University. Dr. Novotny is a  leading authority on pollution in the marine environment and also a  neighbor of mine in Point Loma.

His talk that evening  at the Chapter Meeting was specifically related to cigarette butts  toxicity and their chemical components that leach into the oceans and  bays-contaminating marine and freshwater fish.

A  research paper mentioned at the meeting by SDSU grad student Elli  Slaughter gave ample scientific evidence regarding the usage of the  Comprehensive Environmental Toxicity Information System to identify and  quantify the mortality rate of cigarette butt leachate to fish.

Since  many chemical products are used in the course of growing tobacco and  manufacturing cigarettes, chemical residues will be present in the final  product.

As documented by the website www.cigwaste.org, "used  cigarette butts continue to be the most common form of litter worldwide"  and they have been known to  leach out various chemical components into  the waterways. Many environmentalists are of the mind that used  cigarette butts be defined as hazardous waste material. But in order to  do that, a strict scientific methodology must be used to quantify what   discarded cigarette butt's specific aquatic toxicity is. Therefore, grad  student Slaughter's research paper is an informative resource in the  search for answers about why it is of utmost importance that we keep  used cigarette butts off the beaches and out of the waterways.

To  make a long study short, the research group conducted toxicity  indentification evaluations following U.S. Environmental Protection  Agency acute protocols.

Tests on both topsmelt and fathead minnows  were performed utilizing three different cigarette leachates: 1) from  smoked, filtered cigarette butts with some tobacco, 2) from smoked,  filtered cigarette butts with all tobacco removed, 3) from unsmoked  cigarette filters without tobacco.

The conclusion of  these various tests undoubtedly found scientific proof that smoked,  filtered cigarette butts-with or without tobacco adherance and simply  unsmoked filtered cigarettes with no tobacco adherance were ALL found to  be acutely toxic to representative marine and freshwater fish alike.

These  species of fish who were tested were submerged in water diluted with  the specific testing agent-four replicates for every concentration.   Survival was the endpoint evaluated and data was analyzed to identify  the median lethal effect concentration (LC50)-which was the  concentration of cigarette butt leachate resulting in 50% mortality.

The  toxicity tests were performed three times each  and yielded differing  results. One surprising aspect of the study found that leachate from the  unsmoked filtered cigarettes with no tobacco was found to be acutely  toxic to both of the test fish species, thus confiming that it is the  actual cigarette butt, itself, and not necessarily the tobacco or burned  cigarette ingredients that can contribute die off in aquatic species.

However,  the conclusions of the study also reveal that remnant tobacco did  confer a degree of toxicity above that of the smoked filter alone. A  smoked, filtered cigarette with a remnant of tobacco adherance was found  to increase of the overall toxicity of the cigarette butt and indicated  as the most lethal combination for LC50 fish survival rates.

This  San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health study is  additionally relevant to the determination of research data as it is the  VERY FIRST in the literature to show a parallel between leachate from  cigarette butts and fish toxicity and mortality rates in   labratory-controlled EPA-protocol testing.