Bad for health and the environment: lung experts highlight environmental impact of tobacco product waste
Ahead of World No Tobacco Day 2026 (31 May), the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), of which the Global Initiative for Asthma is a founding member, reiterates the need for countries to urgently implement decisions made at the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
In particular, among the decisions adopted at COP11 was the encouragement for countries to consider comprehensive regulatory options for tobacco and nicotine product components that increase environmental harms.
In a statement published following COP11, founding FIRS member the European Respiratory Society (ERS) underlines the importance of environmental protection in the context of advancing global tobacco control policies. ERS reiterates that cigarette filters, in particular, degrade the environment through waste, pollution and emissions.
Filters are among the world’s most littered plastic waste, and accumulate in the environment over time due to their slow degradation. As they fragment, they also cause microplastic contamination of soil and water.
They can be ingested by marine life, and leach toxic substances such as nicotine into their surrounding environments. Moreover, there is no evidence that these items can be safely recycled.
In addition, despite consumer perception that they create a “safer” cigarette, filters provide no “harm reduction”, and may even increase the risk of lung adenocarcinoma by encouraging deeper inhalation of smoke into peripheral lung tissue.
Efforts to recycle or clean up cigarette filters – including through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programmes – promote the greenwashing narratives of the tobacco industry – undermining comprehensive marketing bans and detracting from tobacco industry financial accountability.
Filters also mislead consumers into believing that filtered products are safer, potentially discouraging cessation efforts. Filters are designed to improve the palatability and appeal of cigarettes; reducing this palatability through a ban would be expected to reduce smoking uptake among younger groups.
ERS Tobacco Control Committee Chair Dr Filippos Filippidis, Associate Professor in Public Health at Imperial College London, United Kingdom, said: “Beyond their direct health effects, tobacco and nicotine products also degrade the environment through waste, pollution and emissions – which compounds the burden on lung health that groups such as ERS’s Tobacco Control, and Environment and Health Committees jointly work to address.
“Phasing out and prohibiting cigarette filters, and single-use electronic nicotine delivery systems alongside them, is the only way forward towards reducing, and ultimately eliminating, the huge environmental burden that these products pose.”
Read the full ERS statement that was published following the WHO FCTC’s COP11 event.