Europe Press and Afp
Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, June 1, 2022, p. eleven
Madrid. The World Health Organization (WHO) published yesterday new data on the damage that tobacco causes both to the environment and to human health, and called for measures to be taken so that the industry be more responsible for the destruction you are causing
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According to data provided by the WHO, released in the context of World No Tobacco Day, the tobacco industry costs the world every year more than 8 million lives, 600 million trees, 200 thousand hectares of land, 22 thousand million tons of water and 84 million tons of carbon dioxide.
Most tobacco is grown in low- and middle-income countries, where water and farmland are often desperately needed to produce food for the area. Instead, they are used to grow deadly tobacco plants, while more and more land is being removed from the forests.
criticized the health agency in its report Tobacco: poisoning our planet.
He highlighted that the carbon footprint of the tobacco production, processing and transportation industry is equivalent to a fifth of the carbon dioxide produced by the commercial airline industry each year, contributing to global warming.
Tobacco products are the most polluting on the planet, containing more than 7,000 toxic chemicals that leak into the environment when they are disposed of. Approximately 4.5 billion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, land, and beaches each year.
, commented Ruediger Krech, director of Health Promotion. The full report can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/3NPfEdJ.