Environment Impact
Right from sowing the seed and growing a tobacco plant leading to disposal of butts and packaging, the environment around us gets deeply impacted.
There are many other environmental impacts due to tobacco. Tobacco contributes to deforestation in many ways forests cleared for cultivation of tobacco, fuel wood stripped from forests for curing and forest resources used for packaging of tobacco, tobacco leaves, cigarettes. Tobacco growing depletes soil nutrients at a much faster rate than many other crops, thus rapidly decreasing the fertility of the soil. Tobacco is heavily dependent on fertilizers. With increased irrigation, mistimed fertilizer application causes excessive leaching, including that of nitrogen and potassium.
Indoor air pollution, cigarettes are the main source of indoor air pollution in the developed countries. Tobacco smoke contains about 4,000 chemicals, some are cancer causing.
Cigarette smoke also contains polonium 210, a radioactive element. One study shows that a person who
smokes 20 cigarettes a day receives a dose of radiation each year equivalent to about 200 chest x-rays.