Place-based estimates of cigarette butt litter raise environmental justice concerns in the United States.

ABSTRACT: Littering of cigarette butts is a major environmental challenge. In 2022, ~124 billion cigarette butts were littered in the United States. This litter may pose an environmental justice concern by disproportionately affecting human and environmental health in communities of color or communities of low socioeconomic status. However, the lack of data on the distribution and magnitude of cigarette butt littering prevents an environmental justice analysis and limits the ability to tackle this environmental challenge. We conducted an environmental justice assessment of tobacco product waste, specifically cigarette butts, through spatially-explicit, place-based estimates across the contiguous U.S. We built a bottom-up model by synthesizing census tract-level population and smoking prevalence, sta

SUBMITTER: Lowe AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11326580 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature