Heather Talley, UR- Too soon to go up in smoke? Pt. 1

Last week I was presented with a question from Caleb on my Hot and Salty blog stating: 

Hi Heather this is Caleb Douglas from OCE1001_02. Whenever I go to the Beach I think it is a disgrace to see people throwing their cigarettes on to the sand so that they can get washed up in the ocean and ruin the environment. How much tobacco will it take to raise the ocean's salinity level?

 

Well to begin the introduction of tobacco into the marine environment will not affect the salinity concentrations; HOWEVER, I will be testing to see if the increased salinity will have an effect on the heavy metals leaching out of the tobacco and filters of a cigarette butt. It has been shown that increased acidity will increase the rate of heavy metal leaching, ocean water is basic with a pH reading of around 8.2 where as fresh water is about 7. This is due to the fact that salt is an alkaline and increases the pH so there should be a correlation between increased salinity and increased pH and hopefully a decrease in the heavy metal concentrations (fingers crossed). This is important because with the increased CO2 in the atmosphere making the oceans more acidic this could pose an issue of increased heavy metal contamination.

Amanda Sterns (sec. 51) asked:

I go to the beach a lot and can't stand the fact that smokers are constantly using the beach sand as their ash tray. I would think that the sand would really get far hotter than ocean surface water. Do you think the heating of these hundreds (if not millions) of cigarette butts in the sand combined with incoming tides, etc. would be an even bigger problem with leaching of cadmium and arsenic? Whatever--just YUK!!!!

When an individual throws a cigarette butt onto the top of the sand there is a higher risk of the butt being carried by the wind to other locations (including the water) or the cigarette butt being picked up by a bird when it confuses it as a food source. After talking with Dr. Bell about this issue she confirmed my thought that that though the sand will heat up the cigarette butts it will not reach a high enough temperature to release chemicals that would be released by actually burning the cigarette. Cigarettes are made so that they will remain stable in hot situations like leaving them in a hot car all day, it’s the water that will actually break the cigarette apart since at this moment cigarettes aren’t made to swim. When a cigarette butt becomes wet the water will begin to break down the glue and paper holding the plastic filter and the tobacco in place. This glue and tobacco begin to break down releasing any of the chemicals that were used to treat and process them including heavy metals and pesticides used on the tobacco plant, leaving behind the cellulose acetate filter to further leach chemicals and cause a risk to organisms that may consume it. So the cigarette butts in the sand does cause an issue when animals or the wind carry them into the water, but the temperature of the sand isn’t a pressing issue to a cigarette butt. What I am trying to test and what the article in my blog “would you like some heavy metal with your aphrodisiac” shows that the increase in water temperature speeds up this breaking down process.  

On my blog Would you like some heavy metal with your aphrodisiac?  I was asked the following questions:

Tamika henry from class OCE1001_02

People eat oysters, if cadmium is toxic what effects will it have on the human consumer after eating an oysters that's is effected with high levels of cadmium.... how high the levels must be to negatively affect a person and low the level must be to non-toxic?

Well unfortunately the test strips that I will be using do not differentiate between what heavy metals are leaching into the water but cadmium is one of them so I will get a general idea that heavy metals including cadmium may be leaching into the water. As for the answer to your question I’m not sure if you have ever heard of a disease called itai itai disease… possibly not but it is actually a disease that happened from a cadmium contamination in japan after cadmium was polluting the local Jinzu river from a mining source. What happened was the cadmium started to bioaccumulate in the sediments of the river then that water was used to irrigate the rice fields, where the rice absorbed the heavy metals including cadmium. This water was also used for washing, drinking water, fishing, etc. When the locals consumed the rice the cadmium accumulated in their kidneys and bones. The cadmium replaces the calcium in the body causing bones to become porous and brittle and causes kidney failure. The Epa has a regulation on the amount of cadmium in drinking water and food sources and it is set as “The Reference Dose (RfD) for cadmium in drinking water is 0.0005 milligrams per kilogram per day (mg/kg/d) and the RfD for dietary exposure to cadmium is 0.001 mg/kg/d.” As I stated cadmium isn’t released from the body it builds up over time storing in the bones and kidneys until levels reach such toxic levels that they cause death. This becomes a problem for people who rely on the contaminated water as a main source of food and drinking water because they have a higher exposer to the cadmium than a person who eats oysters every once and a while. 

Tamika also followed up with:

 How does cadmium affect the marine animals that consume contaminated (high levels of cadmium) oysters?

When cadmium enters the marine environment it settles out into the sediments and is taken up by plants and algae that are eaten by insects and then fish eat the insects and we eat the fish… increasing the concentration in the food chain known as biomagnification. The metal will accumulate in fish’s gills, liver, and kidneys from eating contaminated food sources and “breathing” contaminated water. Cadmium has been shown to cause high blood pressure, iron-poor blood, liver disease, and nerve/ brain damage in animals that have consumed it. Cadmium also effects the birth weight and skeleton development in animals. Fish with cadmium poisoning will often have a poorly developed or crooked spine.

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