Cigarette Butts and Secondh-Hand Smoke

One of Forsyth Park’s playgrounds is a miss. A favorite playsite for kids, it’s filled with cigarette butts. They not only look bad, but they're dangerous for pets, wildlife and especially our children. WSAV facebook fan, Danielle writes -- Tina, I saw your story on the cigarette butts in Forsyth Park. Can you give us more information on how cigarette butts can harm our health? "Another problem of course is the used butt itself because it's made of a non biodegradable cellulose acetate and that butt takes years and years to begin to breakdown. And so it enters into our water supplies and our rivers and streams and that's just unhealthy for all of us," says Breatheasy Chairperson Amy Hughes. We hear about the dangers of second-hand smoke, but the chemicals inside the butts are extremely dangerous too. “There's over 709 chemicals toxic cancer causing chemicals that the surgeon general has identified in cigarettes smoke. So it stands to reason that swallowing that is even worse than inhaling it.”