As a former smoker I knew of many compelling reasons to stop, but there was one I hadn’t thought of and that is what does second hand smoke do to your pets. Since my husband is still a smoker I decided to investigate and found an article from 3/7/04 edition of the New York Post by Julia Szabo and thought I’d share it with you. Perhaps after learning the following you may think twice about continuing the habit, just as my husband is doing right now. And with the latest tax increase on cigarettes now is the ideal time to make the move to a healthier lifestyle that will benefit your family and pets every bit as much as it will help you:
There’s ample scientific evidence to suggest that secondhand cigarette smoke can cause cancer in companion animals. And your furry friends don’t just inhale smoke; the smoke particles are also trapped in their fur and ingested when they groom themselves with their tongues. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that dogs in smoking households had a 60 percent greater risk of lung cancer; a different study published in the same journal showed that long-nosed dogs, such as collies or greyhounds, were twice as likely to develop nasal cancer if they lived with smokers.
And in yet another study, vets from Tufts University found that cats whose owners smoked were three times as likely to develop lymphoma, the most common feline cancer.
Making your home smoke free is perhaps one of the most important things you can do for your family, friends and pets. Pets can develop serious health problems related to second-hand smoke. In the U.S. alone, second-hand smoke is responsible each year for:
*Pets living with heavy smokers suffer from similar respiratory and cardiac symptoms
as the smokers themselves.
*Cats exposed to any second-hand smoke have more than double the risk of malignant
lymphoma, a common cancer in domestic cats. If cats are exposed for five years or
more, the risk increases even further.
*Dogs in smoking households have a greater risk of suffering from lung cancer.
Non-smokers (both our furry and non-furry loved ones) receive the following equivalents of cigarette smoking, according to Katherine Hammond, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health:
*Sitting in the non-smoking section of a restaurant = 1.5 cigarettes
*Living in a pack-a-day smoker’s home = 3 cigarettes
* Riding in a car one hour with a smoker = 4 cigarettes
The next time you light up take a look at your pet and think about what you’re doing to them in the process. Then make the next leap of faith and quit. They have such a short time with us anything you can do to make the quality of their lives better will be repaid with love and affection that will make any suffering you experience in the process worthwhile. And on the up side after you quit you’ll have extra money in the budget, maybe even enough to send a donation to the Randolph County Humane Society. And never forget, it is only through you that they are able to save lives, one by one.
