WHERE THERE'S SMOKE. . .

The Hazards Of Tobacco Use Go Far Beyond Personal Health

IF CANCER and heart disease weren't reason enough to quit cigarettes,
smokers might feel a twinge of conscience at two new reports
highlighting how tobacco endangers the environment and public safety.

Both reports are published in the latest issue of the British Medical
Association journal Tobacco Control. In the first (vol 8, p 18),
Helmut Geist, a forestry scientist formerly at the University of
Dusseldorf, reviews data on forestry and tobacco farming from
individual countries and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. He
estimates that tobacco farmers clear 200 000 hectares of forest and
woodland every year. More than 90 per cent of the land is in the
developing world and this accounts for nearly 5 per cent of the
deforestation each year in the worst affected countries - which
include South Korea, China, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Uruguay.

"The hypothesis promoted by the tobacco industry that no negative
effects such as deforestation are attributable to tobacco must be
challenged," says Geist.

The problem is two-pronged: tobacco growers target virgin forest land
because the soil contains more nutrients and then chop down even more
forest to supply the wood they need to cure the crop and build the
barns for storing their harvests.

In another paper that has not yet been published, Geist calculates
that global tobacco production consumes more than 11 million tonnes of
wood each year. Olivier Dubois of the International Institute for
Environment and Development in London says we need to take a closer
look at the issue. "The key question is whether farmers and their
employers would be doing just as much damage if they weren't working
on the tobacco farms," he says. "We need an environmental impact
assessment."

In the second paper (p 67), Andrew McGuire of the Trauma Foundation
based at the San Francisco General Hospital accuses the tobacco
industry of dragging its heels over introducing a "fire-safe"
cigarette that would slash the death toll from tobacco-related house
fires.

In the US, 1000 people die and many more are injured each year in
fires started by cigarettes - more than in fires with any other single
cause, such as electrical faults or arson. Yet McGuire says that from
1987 onwards, the tobacco giant Philip Morris tested cigarettes that
were less likely to ignite upholstery and mattresses.

According to internal company memos, the new cigarette received
similar scores as ordinary Marlboro cigarettes in taste tests,
although its overall acceptability to smokers was judged to be lower.
The fire-safe cigarette has so far not reached the market.