Could Cigarette Butts Lower Your Home Energy Use?

A London community is studying an innovative technology which may allow for the recycling of discarded cigarette butts into home insulation. The community estimates an average of 4,000 cigarette butts are dropped in the town center daily, then collected during routine street cleanings and sent to the landfill.

Cigarette butts can come from filtered cigarette brands like Cigaronne cigarettes or non filtered Leana cigarettes.

Susan Hall of the Harrow Council told the London Evening Standard, “Cigarette butts are unsightly and add to our landfill costs. Harrow is the second best recycler in London with a rate of 44 percent, but any cost-efficient technology that drives that rate up is worth considering.”

The Harrow Council was inspired by the work of Igloo Environmental, a U.K.-based recycling company focusing on turning fiber waste streams, largely cigarette butts, into useful insulation products. The company encourages city councils to recycle the cigarette butts, citing a dramatic reduction in city expenses associated with cigarette litter and landfilling.

The idea is to divert the butts from the landfill through a sterilization and recycling process. The process removes the toxins in an industrial autoclave (typically used to clean medical equipment) sterilizing the cigarette butts. They are then broken down into their paper and fibrous material components and compacted into insulation “pillows.” The insulation pillows are used in homes to decrease energy consumption associated with heat loss.

In the U.K. alone, 30,000 tons of cigarette butts are discarded and landfilled each year from the smoking of 60 billion cigarettes, according to Igloo Environmental. The process could greatly reduce the leachate of toxins associated with rainwater runoff and landfilling, while providing a 100 percent recycled insulation product for

Cigar and pipe smoking affects directlly our lungs

Smoking cigarettes is a very complicated probelm in the entire world, there is the government that wants to raise taxes on them, there are pesons that use tobacco products, but in the end we all feel the effects of the actions that we take. Many researchers have tried to discover what are the real effects that cigarettesusage has on people.

Scientists recently explored the effects of pipe and cigar smoking on the lungs. They conclude that smoking a pipe or cigar should be considered as unhealthy to the lungs as cigarette smoking, and just as socially unacceptable.

The researchers say pipes and cigars are also a risk factor for lung damage that leads to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Smoking a pipe or a cigar may not be a less risky alternative to cigarettes like some people may think.

Cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine that can be measured in urine samples, can signal risk of lung disease from smoking. Researchers studied 3,528 individuals who never smoke cigarettes but did smoke pipes or cigars, discovering findings consistent with decreased lung function, that can lead to obstructive lung disease – a finding the scientists say should be considered by clinicians who should counsel patients to stop smoking.The study raises concerns for public health because of the increased incidence of tobacco use in the United States say the researchers who also advocate counseling for patients by their physicians to quit smoking pipes and cigars.

R. Graham Barr, MD, Dr.PH, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Presbyterian and lead author of the study says, These findings, together with increased cotinine levels in current pipe and cigar smokers, suggest that long-term pipe and cigar smoking may damage the lungs and contribute to the development of COPD.

Physicians should consider pipe and cigar smoking a risk factor for COPD and counsel their patients to quit.”

Michael B. Steinberg, MD, MPH, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School comments that the tobacco industry perpetrates the social acceptability of pipe and cigar smoking, linking the practice to “sophistication, affluence, education, and celebration”. Smoking pipes and cigars can lead to lung damage and COPD and should be treated as unacceptable as cigarette smoking.

Why Smoking Is Bad For You

The fact that smoking is bad for you is no secret. We'll all seen the pictures of charcoal black lungs displayed in schools and in hospital and doctors waiting rooms.

Despite these scare tactics people continue to smoke and new smokers adopt the habit every single day. Amazingly smoking can still be viewed as an adult thing to do and children continue to be influenced by this.

Their parents or guardians smoke therefore they should smoke too if they want to be really grown up - or at least that's their perception. All smokers wish they had never smoked that first lousy cigarette and shake their heads in disbelief when they see their own kids or teenagers starting to smoke.

Regardless of how you take tobacco it's dangerous. Smoking is the most popular method for people to use tobacco and as such has received massive coverage in both the media and from the medical profession.

Some people chew it, others inhale it as snuff but the majority smokes it in the form of cigars and cigarettes - which is the habit we've all come to know and hate as smokers

R.J. Reynolds to pay $325M in settlement

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said Tuesday it has entered into a settlement with the Canadian federal, provincial and territorial governments to resolve all the government’s claims related to cigarette smuggling in Canada during the 1980s and 1990s.

As part of the settlement, Reynolds is the manufacturer of the well known Camel tobacco product and has agreed to pay the governments $325 million.

Additionally, should Reynolds sell tobacco products in Canada in the future, the company has agreed to adopt packaging, marking and other measures that will help the Canadian governments in their efforts to combat the movement of contraband tobacco products in Canada.

R.J. Reynolds, based in Winston-Salem, does not conduct business in the Canadian tobacco market. Reynolds and its parent company, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc., sold its international businesses to Japan Tobacco Inc. in 1999.

In a separate matter, Northern Brands International Inc., a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, has entered into a plea agreement with the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario.

As a result of its plea to one count of conspiracy to aid others in the sale and possession of contraband cigarettes in the early 1990s, Northern Brands is required to pay a fine of $75 million. Northern Brands ceased being an operating company in 1997.

Chiropractic Four Essentials of Health

To understand the four essentials of health, we have to know the essentials of life. Many things may appear in mind making part of different categories, such as social or psychological. Anyway in terms of physiological essentials for survival, there are four:
1. FOOD
2. WATER
3. OXYGEN
4. NERVE IMPULSE
How do the ESSENTIALS appear? If one of them would stop, we would die. They are the most important things from our lives. If any of them are interfered with, your health is not at its optimum potential.

FOOD

Food is the fuel and building block for growth and reproduction of cells and tissue. It consists of protein, fats and carbohydrates. If any of these were to stop you would die. If their balance is interfered with, your health potential is not at its optimum. For example, if you ate high fat or sugar foods (french fries, doughnuts, etc.) what would be the possible condition of your arteries in 10-20 years? If you said "Clogged up with fat", you are right. Result = lower health potential.

WATER

Fluids - 75% of your body is water. It is used in almost every body process. If you stop fluid intake, you die. If you drink unhealthy fluids (caffeine, alcohol, additives, preservatives, dyes, etc.), or not enough fluids, your body's health potential is decreased.

OXYGEN

Oxygen is also used in almost every reaction of the body, and is carried through the body by the pulmonary (lungs), and circulatory (blood) systems. Interference to these systems could stop oxygen and result in death. We should exercise regularly and breathe deeply to increase our oxygenation to cells. Research finds that oxygen deprivation can cause anything from fatigue to cancer. If oxygenation is not at its optimum, neither is your health potential.

NERVE IMPULSE

Nerve impulse is the most commonly overlooked essential for life and health. Nerve impulse is an electrochemical charge transmitted by the brain through the nervous system to the body. It is the life force that keeps us alive and "charged". ALL BODY FUNCTIONS are dependent on this life force and brain impulse. Cells must be electrically charged in order to vibrate and function. If your brain stopped (generator for electrical impulses) you would die. In fact, to be declared legally dead, brain impulse must stop. If you severed the nerve to your heart, would it stop? How about your stomach, lungs, or hand? What if you just interfere with the normal nerve transmission? Would these organs and tissues function at their optimum potential?

One of the major causes for such nerve interference is a misalignment of the spine commonly termed by chiropractors as a subluxation. Subluxations can interfere with the nerve, the spinal cord, and reflex nerve pathways, resulting in abnormal function and a lower health potential. If your spine is subluxated you cannot be at your optimum health potential, regardless of how good your food, water, and oxygen is, because you are still interfering with one of the essentials of life and health.

The chiropractor's primary role is to locate and correct subluxations, thus removing nerve interference and allowing the body to restore its normal function. It is not a treatment for symptoms or a cure for disease, but merely a way of improving the body's optimum health potential, through proper nerve integrity. This is why everyone should see a chiropractor from the time they are born, and regularly throughout their lifetime. Maintenance of a healthy spine means optimum nerve integrity and optimum health potential.

So remember, to achieve and maintain optimum health potential, maintain the most optimum quality of the four essentials of health and life - food, water, oxygen and nerve impulse. But pay special attention to the most neglected one - nerve impulse - by having your spine checked for subluxations by a chiropractor. It could be the answer you have been searching for.