Abstract
Cigarette butts are the most common poorly degradable substances, containing highly toxic substances known as nicotine. They are made up of cellulose acetate which is man-made plastic and littered on the earth without decomposing and even at the municipal level, they are rarely recycled. They leach toxic chemicals into the soil and water, and they can remain unchanged for up to ten years polluting the soil and water. The plant Nicotiana tabacum also contains the toxic substance nicotine in its leaves. The current study’s hypothesis is to test the impact of cigarette butts and tobacco leaves on the degradation process using earthworms as model organism. The experiment has five factorial designs, which consist of cigarette butts (CB), Nicotiana tabacum (NT), soil (S), and cow dung (CD) in the following ratio E1 − 50% CD + 25% S + 25% CB, E2- 50% CD + 25% S + 25% NT, E3- 50% CD + 25% S + 12.5% CB + 12.5% NT, E4 − 50% CD + 25% S + 25% 1ST part of CB, E5 − 50% CD + 25% S + 25% 2nd part of CB and control vermibin C − 50% CD + 50% S are carried out for cycles 1 and 2 on the 45th and 90th day respectively. The degradation process is slightly increased and the biomass of the earthworm in cycle 1 was augmented with juvenile, while in cycle 2 juvenile and sub-adults were observed and the reproduction rate of the earthworms gets reduced due to the impact of the substrate. The amplification of the metabolic profile was recorded in E4 for both cycles 1 and 2. The chemical substance nicotine, which is present in both substrates, is highly toxic to the earthworm and has resulted in mortality and a decreased rate of reproduction in the vermibin of E2, whereas an increased reproduction rate has been observed in E4.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the management of Kongunadu Arts and Science College, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu for providing the infrastructure facility to carry out the research work and also thank the DST -NM, New Delhi.
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V. Vaidhegi: Conducted experiments; original draft wrote; analysed the data.
K. Saminathan: Software; Data curation; review and editing.
S. Preethee: Review writing; performed the statistical analysis; interpretation.
P. Kathireswari: Investigation; supervision; manuscript correction and revision process.
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Vaidhegi, V., Saminathan, K., Preethee, S. et al. Vermi-Acceleration on the Degradation of Cigarette Butts and Nicotiana tabacum Using Earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae. Water Air Soil Pollut 234, 479 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-023-06470-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-023-06470-x