Recent coverage of the risks of second hand smoking, such as an article in USA Today, unveiled some interesting statistics. Namely, second hand smoke has been proven as harmful to dogs and cats, and perhaps even more interestingly, people who know that smoking is bad for themselves may be more motivated to quit when they learn that smoking also harms their pets.
Pet Health Impact of Secondhand Smoking
First, let’s look at the facts. Here are some of the health conditions and facts associated with second hand smoking and dogs or cats (or any other live-in animal, for that matter):
• Just because it’s secondhand doesn’t mean its harmless: secondhand smoke from cigarettes delivers over 4,000 chemicals into the air. Many of these chemicals are harmful for anyone who breathes them in, animals and humans alike.
• For dogs, secondhand smoke contributes to lung cancer and nasal cancer.
• For cats, secondhand smoke contributes to malignant lymphoma.
• Effects of secondhand smoke can make a healthy pet much less resilient.
• Effects of secondhand smoke put an animal that already has respiratory problems at much higher risk for sever damage and illness.
Certainly, your pets will be exposed to any toxin that enters your home. In this way, humans an animals experience secondhand smoke the same: they all breathe it into the lungs.
But animals are exposed in other ways as well—ways that don’t impact humans and that you might not think of. In addition to the smoke particles in the air, smoke toxins absorb into carpets and upholstery (which animals breath much more close-up than humans do). Smoke also absorbs into the fur of an animal itself—just like it does into humans’ hair—but the difference is that animals lick their fur to groom themselves, causing ingestion as well as inhalation of the harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Four-Legged Friends: The Final Straw?
The upside of this—not of the health damages, but of the health damages finally coming to light—is that it may be the final push that many people need in deciding to finally stop smoking once and for all. All smokers know that smoking is bad for their own health, but when you’re only hurting yourself, it’s easy to justify continuing the behavior.
However, proving the negative impact that secondhand smoking has on pets (much like proving the impact it has on infants) may be a promising deterrent for smokers. In an online survey cited by USA Today, over 3,000 pet owners were surveyed. Nearly half of those owners were either smokers, or lived in a home with someone who smoked. But almost 40% said that if presented strong and clear evidence that smoking was hurting their pets and causing animal cancer, they would quit smoking (or insist that the smoker in their house quit).
These statistics are interesting. And as the facts become more well known, and as collective campaigns such as Fluffy Quits (at FluffyQuits.com) gain momentum, people will likely to continue the push to leave cigarettes behind in favor of providing a safe home to their furry companion. After all, those companions have much to do with ‘home’ being a welcoming, happy place: they deserve to be safe and healthy there.
