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It's time to ban useless cigarette filters to stub out litter
减少垃圾从禁止使用香烟过滤嘴开始
Do the heaps of cigarette butts that litter the ground where smokers gather get on your nerves? Did you know the filter tips on cigarettes are the most common item of litter in the world? The largest part of most cigarette butts is a non-biodegradable plastic filter made of cellulose.
吸烟者扔在地上的那些烟头会不会让你感到紧张？你知道吗，香烟过滤嘴是世界上最常见的垃圾。大多数香烟的过滤嘴都是由纤维素制成的不可生物降解的塑料过滤嘴。
Filters first appeared in the 1950s. The tobacco industry claimed filters made cigarettes safer by absorbing some of the tar that was blamed for the lung cancer epidemic. We now know, says the BMJ, that this safety argument was a myth, one of many created by the tobacco industry to sell cigarettes.
20世纪50年代，香烟过滤嘴首次出现。烟草业声称，过滤嘴可以过滤部分焦油（肺癌的主要原因），从而使抽烟变得相对安全。现在我们知道，《英国医学杂志》表示，其安全性争论已成不解之谜，而这也是烟草业为创造香烟销量而编造的众多论据之一。
Filters did reduce tar when cigarettes were tested in smoking machines designed by the industry, but not when smoked by people. Realising this, the industry shifted the focus from trying to find a filter that would reduce toxins to describing cigarettes with misleading terms such as 'light,' 'low tar,' and 'natural'.
当用烟草业设计的吸烟机器抽烟时，的确发现过滤嘴可以减少焦油，但当抽烟对象换成人类时，结果就另当别论了。意识到这一点后，烟草业将人们的关注点从试图找到一种可以减少毒素的过滤嘴转变为用一些误导性的术语（比如轻、低焦油和纯天然）描述香烟。
These terms are now prohibited in many countries, so should we be considering a ban on the filters we now know to be ineffective? The tobacco industry has worked hard to avoid anything that casts cigarettes in a bad light, including distracting attention from the pollution caused by butts.
现在，多个国家已禁止使用这些术语，所以既然我们已经知道过滤嘴效用不大，是否应该考虑禁止使用过滤嘴呢？烟草业一直都在努力避开对香烟不利的情况，包括努力分散大众的注意力，使其不再关注烟头造成的污染问题。
"Filters are the deadliest fraud in the history of human civilization," says Robert N Proctor, professor of the history of science at Stanford University. "They are put on cigarettes to save on the cost of tobacco and to fool people. They don't filter at all. In the US, 400,000 people a year die from cigarettes – and those cigarettes almost all have filters."
“香烟过滤嘴是人类文明史上最致命的欺骗，”斯坦福大学科学史教授罗伯特·普罗克特（Robert N Proctor）说道。“使用香烟过滤嘴的初衷是为了节省烟草成本，欺骗大众。实际上，它们并不能过滤任何物质。在美国，每年有40万人因抽烟离世，而这些香烟大多都装有过滤嘴。”
The EU will ban single-use plastic products, such as cutlery, plates and straws, from 2021. However, this ban doesn't include one of the leading sources of plastic waste that pollutes our public spaces worldwide: the cigarette butt.
欧盟将从2021年起禁止使用一次性塑料产品，例如餐具、盘子和吸管。但该禁令不包括污染全球公共场所的一种主要塑料废物：烟头。
It's not clear why filters weren't included in the ban on single-use plastics. However, the tobacco industry mounts large-scale lobbying activities to divert attention from its damaging products.
关于过滤嘴并未上榜（一次性塑料产品禁令）的原因尚不清楚。但是，烟草业开展了大规模的游说活动，以转移人们对这一有害产品的注意力。
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