Buyers examine tobacco leaves on the opening day of Zimbabwe's tobacco auction season at Tobacco Sales Floor in Harare, Zimbabwe, on March 30, 2022.(Photo: Xinhua)

The tobacco industry is a far greater threat than many realize as it is one of the world's biggest polluters, from leaving mountains of waste to driving global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) charged Tuesday.

The WHO accused the industry of causing widespread deforestation, diverting badly needed land and water in poor countries away from food production, spewing out plastic and chemical waste as well as emitting millions of tons of carbon dioxide. 

In its report released on World No Tobacco Day, the UN agency called for the tobacco industry to be held to account and foot the bill for the cleanup.

The report, "Tobacco: poisoning our planet," looks at the impacts of the whole cycle, from the growth of plants to the manufacturing of tobacco products, to consumption and waste.

While tobacco's health impacts have been well documented for decades - with smoking still causing more than 8 million deaths worldwide a year - the report focuses on its broader environmental consequences.

The findings are "quite devastating," Ruediger Krech, WHO director of health promotion, told AFP, slamming the industry as "one of the biggest polluters that we know of."

The industry is responsible for the loss of some 600 million trees each year, while tobacco growing and production uses 200,000 hectares of land and 22 billion tons of water annually, the report found.

It also emits around 84 million tons of carbon dioxide, it said.

In addition, "tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded," Krech said in a statement.

He pointed out that each one of the estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that end up in our oceans, rivers, sidewalks and beaches every year can pollute 100 liters of water. 

And up to a quarter of all tobacco farmers contract so-called green tobacco sickness, or poisoning from the nicotine they absorb through the skin.

Farmers who handle tobacco leaves all day consume the equivalent of 50 cigarettes worth of nicotine a day, Krech said.

This is especially worrying for the many children involved in tobacco farming.

"Just imagine a 12-year-old being exposed to 50 cigarettes a day," he said.

Most tobacco is grown in poorer countries, where water and farmland are often in short supply, and where such crops are often grown at the expense of vital food production, the report said.

Tobacco farming also accounts for about 5 percent of global deforestation, and drives depletion of precious water resources.

At the same time the processing and transportation of tobacco account for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions - with the equivalent of one-fifth of the global airline industry's carbon footprint.

AFP