A new study’s findings are butt-ugly: Cigarettes release dangerous toxins even after they’re put out.
Discarded butts can in one day give off the equivalent of up to 14 percent of the nicotine that a burning cigarette emits, according to the study from the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
The toxins released during the “after smoke” could be hazardous for those who light up and then pile up cigarette butts indoors, scientists said.
“You might think that by never smoking in your car when kids are present, you are protecting the nonsmokers or children around you,” Dustin Poppendieck, an author of the study, told the institute. “But if the ashtray in your hot car is full of butts that are emitting these chemicals, exposure is happening.”
The study tracked nine chemicals emitted from 2,100 cigarettes that were artificially smoked, extinguished and analyzed in different environments based on temperature, humidity, wind speeds and dampness of the butts.
Scientists found that emissions from a butt could expose people to a quarter of the chemicals they face when someone is smoking around them.
“The biggest surprise was that the amount of chemical you could be potentially exposed to from a cigarette butt is not insignificant,” Poppendieck said.
Most of the chemicals from cigarette butts are emitted in the first 24 hours, but traces of nicotine can linger for days, the study found.
The authors of the study recommend smokers discard their butts in sealed containers, like a capped mason jar.
“[After smoke] is going to slowly decrease,” Poppendieck said, “but it’s never going to go to zero.”