BassBlaster

Science: Bass and Butts

That title got your attention?

I forget what the latest smoking statistics are for this country. I know it’s been on the decline lately. I also know they’re coming out with those real life gruesome pictures to put on packs to help discourage smoking.

Steering this now a little toward bass fishing – I know lots of guys who won’t allow an angler to smoke while in their bass boats for fear of putting a burn hole in their carpet or boat seat. And if you run an I/O of any sort, smoking is just a really bad idea in general (you’ll blow up real good!).

Now, a study out of San Diego State University gives anglers another reason not to smoke, or at least a reason to not toss your cigarette butts in the lake.

Turns out the components in a cigarette butt, residues, tars and particulates, is pretty toxic to fish of all kinds. Some excerpts from the report:

  • “It is toxic at rather low concentrations,” Novotny said. “Even one butt in a liter of water can kill the fish in a period of 96 hours.”
  • Novotny says cigarette butts are the number one littered substance in the world…
  • “…we hope people will be more conscious about what they do with these cigarette butts.”

If you do the math, a 50,000 acre bassin’ lake like Lake Murray in South Carolina can contain over 750 billion gallons of water. At the toxic rate of 1 butt per liter, you would need to add about 2.8 trillion butts to kill off all the fish life, probably less due to compounding effects. Still, you get the basic idea.

You can read the full news report at the link above. In the mean time, back on the subject of blowin’ up real good

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Carl H.

    August 29, 2011 at 10:06 am

    What about dip, does it have some of the same effects? Because there are a lot of guys I fish with that are constantly spitting and then they throw the used clump into the lake and reload.

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