Question by Suzy

You clearly know better than to smoke, so quit looking around for more reasons, stop procrastinating, and STOP SMOKING! It’s the best thing you can do for your health and the health of everyone around you. When you light up a cigarette, it’s like turning the ignition key on a diesel bus. Sucking on that cigarette is like putting your mouth around the tailpipe of that bus. Yuck. I’ve done a lot of research into the toxicity of diesel exhaust, and the amazing thing is that it’s almost the same as cigarette smoke except for the nicotine. Every smoker is kind of like another truck on the road – generating particulate matter, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, toxic metals such as cadmium, known carcinogens such as benzene and acrylamide, and a list of nearly a hundred additional toxic chemicals. Who wants to be a walking polluter? I am very sympathetic to the victims of the tobacco industry (which knowingly makes cigarettes addictive), and I do everything I can to get my patients and everyone I know to stop subsidizing Big Tobacco with their dollars, and use their money instead to improve their own lives and the lives of their families and others. Good luck quitting the habit, I know it’s hard! Get professional help if you need it, but quit!

Every three pounds of processed cotton takes one pound of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides to grow. (They spray the seed, soil and plant several times.) Cotton however is the SECOND crop that uses the most chemicals in the US however-- beaten only by tobacco.  
 
In thinking about pollution caused by cigarettes, think about how it's grown too! It's not just food; all of agriculture has large effects on our land, soil and water, and this includes tobacco