Aspectos da contaminação de praias urbanas por bitucas de cigarro

Abstract

A large part of the world population is concentrated in coastal areas, and Brazil is the country with half of its population near the coastline. This high concentration contributes to a high amount of garbage in marine regions, especially on urban beaches, being cigarette butts/filters one of the most found materials. In this context, the objectives of the present study were: (i) to evaluate the spatial and temporal variation of cigarette butts, (ii) to quantify and categorize the cigarette butts as to the degree of degradation, and (iii) to perform an audit of the marks of the cigarette butts found on the beaches of Pina and Boa Viagem, Recife-PE. The dissertation presents two chapters organized in manuscript form: The first chapter deals with a comprehensive systematic review on the topic of environmental contamination by cigarette butts. Through the use of the IRaMuTeQ software, a qualitative analysis of what has been discussed in the publications on the theme was performed, in which 116 articles with different perspectives on environmental impacts from cigarette butts were quantified. The second manuscript identified the spatial and temporal variation of cigarette butts in two regions with different patterns of use, Pina (P1: much used) and Boa Viagem beach (P2: little used). For this purpose, ten transects were positioned in both areas, with a total of twelve collections between May 2021 and January 2022. After collection and sorting, an expressive number of 10,275 cigarette butts was observed, with a density of 8.85 liters/m2 in P1 and 1.05 liters/m2 in P2. Besides the quantification, the collected cigarette butts presented 4 stages of degradation and 18 different brand types were observed in 33.42% of the collected cigarette butts.