Cigarettes and Pollution

Below are some statistics I looked up. I don't have anything to compare cigarette pollution to yet (except for the segment from the Italian Institute for Higher Health), but I'll see what I can come up with. I think my math is right, but I welcome corrections.

According to a study conducted by the the Italian Institute for Higher Health, three smouldering cigarettes produced a 10-fold increase in air particles compared to those produced by an idling 2002 Ford Mondeo turbo diesel with a two-litre engine, fuelled with low-sulphur diesel. (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6312)

The mean average of milligrams of CO per cigarrette is 11.5mg (taken from data corresponding to 103 different kinds of cigarettes, a sampling of the statistics found here: www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/1998tar&nicotinereport.pdf , a Federal Trade Commission report).

Estimated number of cigarettes smoked in U.S. in 2005 by the U.S.D.A.: 389 billion
Estimated number of cigarettes produced in the world in 2004: 5.662 trillion

Approximately 4.5 million kilos or 9.9 million lbs of carbon monoxide released into the atmosphere via smoking in the U.S. (11.5mg x 389,000,000,000 / 1,000,000 = # of kilos x 2.2 = # of pounds).

The 465 billion cigarettes smoked in the United States in 1998 translates to a total of 176,250,000 pounds of discarded butts in one year in the United States alone.
(http://www.longwood.edu/cleanva/cigbutthowmany.htm)

The average diameter of a cigarette is approximately 10mm or 1cm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette). One football field is approximately 110m x 50m (http://www.ncaa.org/champadmin/football/football_field.gif). If you stood each cigarette on end, like a chimney stack, you would need 55 million cigarettes¹ to cover an entire football field. It would take about 7,072 football fields, or slightly over 15 square miles², to house all of the cigarettes produced in the U.S. Now imagine those cigarettes burning.

1. 110m = 11000cm; 50m = 5000cm;(11000cm*5000cm)*(1 cigarette / 1cm^2) = 5.5x10^7 cigarettes

2. 1m = 0.000621371192 miles; 110m = 0.06835083112 miles; 50m = 0.0310685596 miles; 7072*0.06835083112 miles*0.0310685596 miles = 15.017829547194793606144 miles^2