香烟即使熄灭后，也会产生看不见的化学物质

香烟即使熄灭后，也会产生看不见的化学物质

Cigarettes aren't just toxic when they're being smoked. Even when the butts are scrunched up and cold, new research has found they continue to emit harmful compounds in the air.

香烟不仅有毒。新的研究发现，即使这些烟蒂被揉成一团并变冷，它们仍会继续向空气中释放有害化合物。

In the first 24 hours alone, scientists say a used cigarette butt will produce 14 percent of the nicotine that an actively burning cigarette would. And the airborne emissions don't stop there.

科学家说，仅在开始的24小时内，一个用过的烟蒂就会产生14%的尼古丁，相当于一支正在燃烧的香烟所产生的尼古丁量。空气中的排放物还不止这些。

While most of these chemicals are released within a day of being extinguished, an analysis for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found concentrations of nicotine and triacetin - a plasticiser in cigarette filters - had fallen by just half a whopping five days later.

虽然这些化学物质中的大多数在熄灭后的一天内就会释放出来，但美国食品和药物管理局(FDA)的一项分析发现，尼古丁和三乙酸乙酯(香烟过滤嘴中的一种塑化剂)的浓度在五天之后只下降了一半。

I was absolutely surprised, says environmental engineer Dustin Poppendieck from the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

美国国家标准与技术研究所(NIST)的环境工程师Dustin Poppendieck说:“我非常惊讶。”

The numbers are significant and could have important impacts when butts are disposed of indoors or in cars.

“这些数字很重要，当烟蒂被丢弃在室内或车内时，可能会产生重要影响。”

While much attention has been paid to the health impacts of first-hand, second-handand now third-hand smoking - where chemical residues linger on walls and furniture - the actual butt of the matter has been paid little attention.

尽管人们对一手烟、二手烟和现在的三手烟对健康的影响给予了很多关注——这些化学残留物会残留在墙壁和家具上——但人们对实际问题的关注却很少。

To measure airborne emissions from this forgotten remnant, Poppendieck and his team placed 2,100 recently extinguished cigarettes inside a walk-in chamber made of stainless steel.

为了测量这一被遗忘的残留物在空气中的排放量，Poppendieck和他的团队将2100根最近熄灭的香烟放在一个由不锈钢制成的房间里。

Of course, they didn't smoke all these themselves. Instead, the team built a machine to take six puffs per cigarette, mimicking the behaviour of actual humans in robotic-like movements.

当然，他们自己并不抽这些烟。相反，研究小组制造了一台机器，可以每根香烟吸6口，模仿真实人类的动作，让机器人做出类似的动作。

Once the freshly-extinguished ends were sealed away, the team measured eight chemicals commonly emitted by cigarettes, four of which the FDA have their eye on for being harmful or potentially so.

一旦熄灭的烟头被密封起来，研究小组测量了香烟通常释放的八种化学物质，其中四种是FDA关注的有害物质或潜在有害物质。

Triacetin is not one of the dangerous ones, but because it's so common in cigarette filters and doesn't evaporate easily, it's a good indicator of how other sticky chemicals are breaking down.

三乙醇胺不是一种危险物质，但因为它在香烟滤纸中很常见，不易挥发，所以它是其他粘性化学物质分解的良好指标。

Fiddling with the room's temperature, humidity and saturation, the authors tested how emissions changed under certain conditions. When the air temperature of the room was higher, for instance, they noticed the butts emitted these chemicals at higher rates.

通过改变房间的温度、湿度和饱和度，作者测试了在特定条件下排放的变化。例如，当房间的温度较高时，他们注意到烟头释放这些化学物质的速度较快。

In other words, leaving ashtrays out for days at a time, especially in the heat seems like a bad idea, and could potentially expose smokers and nonsmokers to even more harmful chemicals than we thought.

换句话说，一次把烟灰缸放在外面好几天，尤其是在高温下，这似乎是个坏主意，可能会让吸烟者和不吸烟者接触到比我们想象中更有害的化学物质。

Hence, the study authors conclude, "the emitted nicotine mass from a butt over five days could be comparable to the nicotine mass emitted from mainstream and sidestream smoke, especially at higher temperatures."

“因此，”该研究的作者总结道，“一个烟蒂在5天内释放出的尼古丁量，可能与主流烟和侧烟释放出的尼古丁量相当，尤其是在高温下。”

The findings are limited because they only implicate one leading brand of cigarettes and there are few other studies to compare them to. Nevertheless, if the numbers are accurate, it means we've been overlooking a big factor of cigarette smoking.

这些发现是有限的，因为它们只涉及一个主要品牌的香烟，没有其他的研究可以对比。然而，如果这些数字是准确的，那就意味着我们忽略了吸烟的一个重要因素。

Today, it's estimated that more than five trillion butts are produced worldwide each year, and many of these don't get fully extinguished or thrown away properly, causing ground pollution as well, since cigarette butts are not biodegradable.

如今，据估计，全世界每年生产超过5万亿个烟蒂，其中许多烟蒂没有完全熄灭或被妥善丢弃，也造成了地面污染，因为烟蒂是不可生物降解的。

You might think that by never smoking in your car when kids are present, you are protecting the nonsmokers or children around you, Poppendieck says.

Poppendieck说:“你可能会认为，当孩子们在场的时候，绝对不要在你的车里吸烟，这是在保护你周围的不吸烟者和孩子。”

But if the ashtray in your hot car is full of butts that are emitting these chemicals, exposure is happening.

“但如果在你闷热的车里的烟灰缸里，都是排放这些化学物质的烟头，那所有人都不能幸免了。”