Bad for Health and Environment: Lung Experts Highlight Impact of Tobacco Product Waste
May 29, 2026
GLENVIEW, IL – Ahead of World No Tobacco Day 2026 (May 31), the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), of which the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) is a founding member, reiterates the need for countries to urgently implement decisions made at the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Among the topics discussed at COP11 was encouragement for countries to consider comprehensive regulatory options for tobacco and nicotine product components that increase environmental harms.
In a statement published following COP11, the European Respiratory Society (ERS), another founding FIRS member, outlined the importance of environmental protection in the context of advancing global tobacco control policies. ERS reiterated 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 filters create a “safer” cigarette, they 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 programs—promote the greenwashing narratives of the tobacco industry, undermining comprehensive marketing bans and detracting from tobacco industry financial accountability.
As mentioned, filters mislead consumers into believing that filtered products are safer, potentially discouraging cessation efforts. They 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 Filippos Filippidis, PhD, 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 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control's COP11 event.
About the American College of Chest Physicians
The American College of Chest Physicians® (CHEST) is the global leader in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of chest diseases. Its mission is to champion the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of chest diseases through education, communication, and research. It serves as an essential connection to clinical knowledge and resources for its 18,000+ members from around the world who provide patient care in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. For information about CHEST and its family of journals, including the flagship journal CHEST®, visit chestnet.org.
About the Forum of International Respiratory Societies
The Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) is an organisation comprising the world's leading international respiratory societies working together to improve lung health globally: American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST), American Thoracic Society (ATS), Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR), Asociación Latino Americana De Tórax (ALAT), European Respiratory Society (ERS), International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (The Union), Pan African Thoracic Society (PATS), Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD).
The goal of FIRS is to unify and enhance efforts to improve lung health through the combined work of its more than 70,000 members globally.