Wood stove pellets in litterbox

[Bam]

I’ve been using the Swedish equivalent of yesterday’s news in my bunnies´ litterboxes, but yesterday I bought a bag of wood stove pellets instead, the kind people use to heat their houses. Then I went home and read about wood stove pellets and found that there are health-hazards. Apparently wood stove pellets release carbon monoxide so you musn’t store them in big boxes in poorly ventilated areas, or you could be poisoned just by being in the same room. There has been a (small) number of deaths in the EU.

Of course I’m now concerned about my bunnies. The pellets I bought has no additives, the carbon monoxide is in the wood itself. I’m not worried about myself, the litter-boxes don’t hold enough pellets for a person to be affected, but a bunny has much tinier lungs.

Do I need to be worried or what do you think?

[LongEaredLions]

Wow! Never heard that…. Now I am a bit nervous too. Are you sure that the CM is released even when the wood is not burned? Wood stove pellets are usually made out of pine, I don’t think pine releases carbon monoxide. D:

[Bam]

It’s the storage, not the burning – trhe burning can be dangerous too, but that’s of course not a danger if the pellets are used in litter-boxes. I read about it in a Swedish paper but then I googled and found this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22879445

It doesn’t say how big the airtight containers used in the test were, but 30 kg of wood stove pellets isn’t much, it’s just two regular bags. They still seem to have emitted a lot of CO.

But the amount used in litterboxes surely couldn’t be enough to harm a rabbit? Although my bunnies like to lie in their litter-boxes and eat hay in them =/ I don’t know what to think.

[Author]

Messages