Microplastic Pollution Much More Serious Than We Thought

Our beautiful planet does not need an additional polluting source of microplastics: they are already everywhere. In all oceans, fresh water, soil, in food, cosmetics, the air we breathe… Unfortunately, a study published in volume 2 of the journal Journal of Hazardous Materials: Plastics (February 2026) just hit the nail on the head on another culprit: cigarette butts.

If we already knew that they were infamous sponges filled with heavy metals, various toxic substances and also microplastics, we had, however, no idea of their dazzling capacity to disintegrate. Made up of cellulose acetate in the majority of cases, it is a flash pollutant: as soon as it is abandoned loosely in the environment, it decomposes within seconds.

An instant poison

A cigarette butt, on its first contact with water, takes only 20 seconds to lose 24 cellulose acetate microfibersit doesn’t matter whether she is calm or agitated. The more the water is stirred by currents, the more it erodes it, like an abrasive sanding the 10,000 compressed fibers that make up the filter.

Across New York State, where the study was conducted, researchers estimate that between 71 million and 1.4 billion microfibers are released into nature every day. Doing a quick calculation (a standard cigarette filter weighs about 0.17 grams), that means about 6 pounds of pure plastic is sprayed as dust into water and soil in New York State alone. Take it on a global scale: the Earth is nothing more than a giant ashtray.

This volume is all the more alarming since these fibers are already saturated with their own toxic cocktail. “ Typically, microplastics are considered problematic because of the chemicals they absorb from the environment, but these are released with their own contamination. We combine the physical pollution of the fibers and the chemical pollution of everything attached to them. “, explains John D. Atkinson, co-author of the study.

Already loaded with thousands of combustion residues (lead, cadmium, hydrocyanic acid, benzene, etc.), they also carry PFAS with them (perfluoroalkylated and polyfluoroalkylated substances), more simply called “ eternal pollutants “. As their name suggests, this family of products is very persistent, overloads ecosystems and its elimination by living organisms is almost impossible.

The tobacco industry has long took advantage of the semantic vagueness surrounding cellulose acetateleaving the idea of a material naturalcar it is derived from wood. This is true, but once subjected to combustion, it is nothing more than a porous vector for the thousands of toxic substances produced by tobacco. If other microplastics absorb pollutants After having been dispersed in the environment, cigarette butts are already saturated at the source. Thus, they introduce a lethal dose of pyrolysis residues in the first links of the food chain, where other plastics take months to accumulate such a toxic load. The circle has come full circle: unscrupulous smokers who throw their butts on the ground will, sooner or later, end up find tiny pieces of it on their plate. Enjoy your food !