London, Europe Brief News – World Health Organisation (WHO) said that tobacco industry causes widespread deforestation, pollution, and emitting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The tobacco industry is a far greater threat than many realise as it is one of the world’s biggest polluters, from leaving mountains of waste to driving global warming, WHO’s report revealed.
“Poisoning Our Planet, published on Tuesday to coincide with World No Tobacco Day, outlined new findings on the extent to which the tobacco industry is harming both the environment and human health.”
It found that the tobacco industry is responsible for the annual loss of eight million human lives, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water, and releases about 84 million tonnes of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The report found that the carbon footprint from production, processing and transporting tobacco is equivalent to one-fifth of the CO2 produced by the commercial airline industry each year, further contributing to global warming.
The findings are “quite devastating,” Ruediger Krech, WHO director of health promotion, told AFP news agency, slamming the industry as “one of the biggest polluters that we know of”.
In addition, “tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded”, Krech said.
Most tobacco is grown in poorer countries, where water and farmland are often in short supply, and where such crops are often grown at the expense of vital food production, the report said.
