Question+4

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4. For your chosen drug: Significantly less people use these drugs. What are the effects of excretory byproducts? What if twice as many people used this drug? What if everyone in Hamilton used the drug for a week? Be sure to consider the consequences of bio-magnification in your answer.======

The first evidence that nicotine use has environmental consequences is the fact that nicotine products are classified as hazardous waste in Washington State (Washington State Department of Ecology 1994-2009). Increased use of nicotine would have three major environmental impacts: the effects of producing tobacco, the excretion of nicotine metabolites into water systems, and the effect of increased smoking on air quality. A key step in the production of nicotine is the curing of tobacco. This is usually done through the combustion of either wood or fossil fuels, typically coal (Fraser). When wood is used, as is the case in most developing countries, up to 40 kg of wood are required per kilogram of final product. Three developing countries, China, India, and Brazil, are projected to be responsible for producing 4,243,000 tonnes of tobacco, or 60% of the world’s total production, in 2010 (Northoff 2003). As the average amount of wood needed per kilogram of tobacco to be flue-cured is 7.8 kg, this amounts to more than 33 billion kilograms of wood used per year (Fraser). Wood is also in the paper packaging of nicotine products (Fraser). As most tobacco production occurs in regions with depleted or shrinking forests, this use of wood contributes significantly to deforestation and habitat destruction (Fraser). The use of coal contributes to atmospheric pollution, and the combustion of both wood and fossil fuels add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere (Fraser). An increase in the number of smokers in Hamilton would not significantly affect these data, but a doubling of smokers worldwide would logically double deforestation and pollution due to tobacco production. The principle metabolite of nicotine is cotinine, an oxidized form of the nicotine molecule. Cotinine is excreted from the body over a period of days, and urine concentrations of this compound are used to measure exposure to nicotine in smokers and non-smokers (Jarvis et al. 1998). Cotinine, being a natural plant product, has been found to biodegrade in moving stream water (Bradley et al. 2007). Even so, a water quality study found cotinine in 35% of sites sampled across the United States, with a maximum concentration of 0.1 μg/L. Cotinine was present in more than half of surface water sites sampled (Focazio et al. 2008). The percentage of people who smoke in Hamilton is comparable to that of the American average, with values of 21.5% (Statistics Canada 2007) and 20.6% (US Department of Health and Human Services 2009) respectively, although slightly different methods were used to obtain these two values. It can therefore be assumed that cotinine concentrations in local bodies of water are similar to those in the United States. If twice as many people smoked, most bodies of water would be likely to contain cotinine, and more groundwater sources would be contaminated. If everybody in Hamilton smoked, it would be difficult to find a source of water that did not contain cotinine. Cotinine is not known to be toxic; it has even been found to improve reaction time and certain types of memory function at low concentrations (Herzig et al. 1998). However, cotinine is often used as a bioindicator of other toxins associated with tobacco use, so increased cotinine concentrations could have important consequences (Jarvis et al., 1998). If these other products’ concentrations increased along with cotinine in a situation of increased nicotine usage, this would have detrimental health effects on anybody using this water for consumption or food production as well as local wildlife. If toxic compounds did not accompany cotinine into water systems, the increased cotinine concentrations could still have consequences. Because cotinine is routinely used to judge exposure to cigarette smoke, people exposed to cotinine originating from other sources would appear to have been exposed to more nicotine than they had in reality, resulting in faulty data. As this information is used to determine life insurance rates, child custody rights, compatibility with medical treatments, and employability, artificially inflated values of urine cotinine concentration could negatively affect many people (AACC 2007). Regardless of whether toxins accompany cotinine into waterways, an increase in cotinine levels in water due to increased prevalence of nicotine use would cause problems. The most well known consequence of smoking on the smoker’s surroundings is second hand smoke. Of course, this only applies to people using nicotine in the form of cigarettes, while the previously discussed effects also apply to nicotine patches and gum. Because tobacco smoke contains many toxins, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke has been associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, and heart attacks (McNabola and Gill 2009). The atmosphere in Toronto bars and coffee-shops where smoking was not permitted was measured to contain 11ng/m3 of toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, while the atmosphere in venues that permitted smoking was measured to contain 162 ng/m3 (Zhang et al. 2008). Even in environments where smoking was prohibited, there were significant traces of tobacco smoke. A doubling in the number of smokers would probably double these numbers. If everyone in Hamilton were to smoke, non-smoking zones would become obsolete, and much higher toxin levels would be expected. In 2000/2001, more than 25% of non-smokers reported having been exposed to second hand smoke in a one-month period (Vozoris and Lougheed, 2008). The most common locations of exposure were public places and workplaces. If the prevalence of smoking doubled, this number would also be expected to double. If everybody smoked, exposure to second hand smoke would be irrelevant, as the effects of directly smoking tobacco are much worse than exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. After the one-week period of intense smoking had ended, it is expected that atmospheric levels of toxins would require an extended period to normalize, as they did when anti-smoking legislation came into effect in Ontario (Zhang et al. 2008).
 * Response to Question 4 **