Pine and Cedar shavings are dangerous

[Beekissed]

Doesn't really matter..they all mix with poop. Another reason you won't want to use hay is if you have birds penned into coop and run...for lack of good grass forage they can and will ingest long strands of hay and can get impacted crops from it. I only use hay in the nest boxes and my birds free range, so it's no worry that they will ingest the hay but penned birds may.

Hay gets sodden and the long strands also make it hard to move, turn, shift and it forms mold caps.

 

[donrae]

What type of hay (oat, straw, alfalfa, mixed, timothy,etc) would you recommend if one is willing to use hay instead? (Sorry if I missed it above?)

First, hay and straw are different things. Hay is food, straw is bedding.

Seriously, hay is nutritious. Grass hay has the grass stems and seed heads. Oat hay has the oats intact. Alfalfa has all the leafy goodness.

Straw is just stems, usually of oats or wheat. The seed has been removed and the stalk left has negligible nutrition. Straw is cheaper.


I don't like either, as Bee stated they mat horribly. I have a small coop I used grass hay in, in desperation to combat mud. I now have a matted, horrible mess that will be exhausting to clean out. Shavings or a nice mixed medium bedding is easily fluffed up for a good deep litter in the coop. Hay or straw isn't, it compacts down. Also holds mold.

If you're determined to use one, go with straw. It's cheaper and you'll be going through a lot.

 

[bobbi-j]

We use straw because we grow wheat and it's available. It does mat, but can be fluffed if one wants to keep up with it daily. I have never used shavings, but I think if you want a more maintenance free bedding for deep litter, that's probably it. In my coops, the straw mats on top and when I clean that off, there is still fluffy straw on the bottom. I've been using it for deep litter all winter. In the past, I have thrown some old alfalfa hay in the coop in the winter, but not for bedding. The chickens LOVED the dried alfalfa leaves and flowers.

 

[rc4u]

I know ive said it a ton already, but cheap burlap over the pine is the way to go...its reusable and cleans easily and extends use of the shavings underneath greatly...and so much easier to clean...no dust or chips to eat..i don't use it in the hen coop just the brooder..and if your getting sick of me mentioning it i will quit...jeff.

 

[TERRY4]

I get a hardwood shavings from an amish guy up the road. As long as you don't use cedar or walnut shavings you're fine. I learned all this from raising goats and bedding down my horse.

 

[Robinnbama]

I understand that Pine SHAVINGS are safe when used in a well ventilated area.. But what about homemade pine MULCH ? (just the pine cones shredded up) I have 7 hens about 3 months old and we are trying to find a more economical bedding. (A bale of hey is $5 now).. Thanks in advance for any input

 

[TERRY4]

Do you have any amish nearby? I use hardwood shavings. About any but black walnut. It's toxic. I never heard of pine being bad, but then never used it. Too pricey! Bought pine shavings for my horse a couple of times and found a lot of mold in it. That's the bales from livestock stores, not to throw in any names.

 

[Robinnbama]

The nearest Amish to me are about an hour and half or two hours north.. (I'm in Alabama).. Hubby just picked up a bale of straw this morning from our local supply guy.. seems pretty good shape... if not, he will make it right...

 

[bruceha2000]

I've only used pine shavings. Never a problem.

I tossed down a goodly amount of hardwood shavings in the run (which is inside the barn) - planing down rough lumber for stair newels and "dress" stringers (hard maple) and for treads and risers (ash). Did a nice job of soaking up the water from the melting snow that finds it way into the run, no more mud problems ... and FREE.

Bruce

 

[tbiM20]

Hi! Decided to stop lurking and actually join the forum

We've done some research on pine and cedar in another forum (links: article 1, article 2), so thought I'd share with you all. Obviously it was written for hamsters, not chickens, but the general info applies to all animals, even humans.

for her contributions to this article.

We have all read the warnings about the use of cedar or pine as substrates - it’s dangerous to our little friends’ health and can cause permanent damage. But that leaves a lot of us with questions of why it hurts them or how it’s more dangerous than other substrates. I will explain as best I can, using citations of medical and scientific articles rather than circumstantial discussions and “how-to” articles.

Why cedar?
Cedar itself contains a component called “plicatic acid,” which is unique to cedar - all species of cedar. This acid is a natural fungicide - meaning it protects the wood from fungus - and is what makes cedar a great gardening and fencing product without needing chemical treatments to resist rotting. There are other natural compounds in cedarwood that are more potent fungicides, but plicatic acid is about 8 to 10 times more abundant than any of the others. (Many of those other compounds are toxic in their own rights, but for the purpose of this article I will limit myself to plicatic acid for the time being.)
Source 1: http://chromsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/45/5/281.full.pdf

Why pine?
Pine doesn’t contain plicatic acid, but it does contain “abietic acid.” Pine is a species of conifer tree, and all species of conifer trees contain abietic acid - this includes spruce, fir, cypress, juniper, yew, and the aforementioned cedar. Abietic acid is commonly used in solder flux (a product used in soldering microchips and copper pipes), in rosin (used by violinists), and in some cleaning products (Pine Sol.) OSHA has classified abietic acid as a skin and respiratory irritant, so that industries where workers are exposed to the acid are required to monitor exposure levels.
Source 2: http://www.osha.gov/dts/chemicalsampling/data/CH_216250.html

How does exposure occur?
The most common ways to get exposed to either of these acids is through physical content or through inhalation. In Source 3, samples of lung and tracheal (windpipe) tissue from both rats and humans were exposed to plicatic acid and abietic acid. They tested for both dose-dependent and time-dependent results, meaning that they tested a variety of doses and evaluated the progress over an extended time period. The result was lysis (disintegration) of cells, and then sloughing (shedding) of the dead cells, for both acids, both short-term from high doses and long-term from low doses. For example, sloughing also happens on burn patients, leaving the inner layers of skin exposed to infection and probable scarring.
Source 4 is a discussion of asthma in humans as a result of exposure to plicatic acid. The study followed individuals in the woodworking industry. Those who reacted had high levels of certain antibodies, and those who did not react didn’t have the antibodies, which showed that the asthma was an immune system response to cedar exposure. Of the 75 individuals who left the woodworking industry (and so were no longer exposed to cedar), only half of them actually stopped having asthma symptoms after 3 years.
Source 5 is an article for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, analyzing a variety of earlier studies involving carcinogenicity (cancer-causing) of wood dust. One cited study discusses how pine, alder, and cedar were significantly more cytotoxic (cell-killing) than the other studied wood, aspen, but bleached cellulose materials (paper) were nontoxic even at incredibly high doses. A second cited study compares abietic acid and plicatic acid exposure, concluding that both are cytotoxic, though plicatic acid is more toxic even at significantly lower levels.
Source 6 is an evaluation by the National Toxicology Program of wood dust. Western Red Cedar is regulated by OSHA separately from other woods for inhalable wood dust limits. Wood dust in general is classed as a Known Human Carcinogen, though sensitivities to softwoods in particular (cedar, pine, fir, hemlock, etc.) are noted.
Lastly, Source 7 is a scholarly article about the toxicity of pine and cedar in small animals. The article acknowledges that most studies have focused on occupational exposure in humans, rather than bedding in small animals, though the fact that plicatic/abietic acids kill cells still holds true regardless of the method of exposure. In fact, considering that small animals on pine or cedar bedding are in near-constant contact with the offending products, it could be surmised that they would receive more direct exposure.
Source 3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2926083
Source 4: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0091674982901981
Source 5: http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol62/mono62-6D.pdf
Source 6: http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/newhomeroc/roc10/wd.pdf
Source 7: http://www.searchdogsne.org/reference/Medical/cedar_pine_toxicity.pdf

What about phenols?
Phenols are aromatic compounds that are known to be toxic and caustic (causes acid burns) in higher concentrations, and are used in a variety of industries. In lower concentrations they can be used as antiseptics, such as mouthwash or Lysol... even then, we all learned as children that we shouldn't drink mouthwash. Phenols are volatile, with a low molecular weight, meaning that they become airborne very easily. They are very common, especially in any strong-scented wood.
Source 8: http://www.epa.gov/ttnatw01/hlthef/phenol.html
Source 9: http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/safety/healthcare/handbook/Chap19.pdf

What about kiln-drying?
Contribution by Taxonomist:
Contrary to what its name might suggest, abietic acid is a very stable solid. The melting point of abietic acid is between 282 - 311F (Source 10), depending on purity. Its boiling point is absurdly high at about 823F. This means that for abietic acid to be removed from pine wood, the wood would have be heated to at least 282F to allow the abietic acid to melt and ooze out. Even this would not necessarily guarantee removal, as wood is porous and capable of holding liquid like a sponge.
The stability of abietic acid presents a problem regarding kiln drying. Kiln drying is done at rather low temperatures, to prevent damage to the wood. The standard kiln drying temperature for most pine species is no higher than 180F (range 100F - 180F, Source 11). This is much too cool to even melt, much less boil, abietic acid from pine wood.
It doesn't seem that kiln-drying has any effect on the abietic acid content of the wood. Kiln-drying would not melt or evaporate the abietic acid out of the wood (as is so commonly believed)--it would remain as a solid, unaffected by the process.
Source 10: www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/fluka/00010?lang=en&region=US
Source 11: www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr57.pdf


As an engineer part of my education was with treatment systems, such as with wastewater and airborne contaminants. What you will always find is that you can never get rid of the contaminant. You can reduce it, sure, but never eliminate it. As your “elimination process” works, over time there will be decreasing rates of return. So if you filter air from a contaminated room for 60 minutes, in that first 30 minutes you’ll catch more contaminants than you will in the second 30 minutes. If we filtered that room for 365 days, there would still be contaminant in there that we haven’t yet caught. Well, it’s the same for kiln-drying - after a little while the amount of work you put in to remove the offending substance just doesn’t balance out with how much you actually remove.
But remember: kiln-drying is focused on removing water, not phenols and not abietic acid. Even though some lightweight compounds evaporate during the kiln-drying process, not all will, and that is the discerning point here. How much depends on how much was there in the first place, the temperature of the oven, the surface-to-volume ratio, and the time the wood is in the kiln. Then there’s the fact that we don’t know how they kiln-dried it. The exact process, the moisture content they’re aiming for, the temperature, the time, what kind of kiln they use... all that depends on what the wood is being used for. It could be anywhere from 140 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit (depending on species), in a high or low humidity environment, for virtually any extent of time. There is no set process as it is up to the manufacturer’s preferences, and what they want the wood to be used for.
Since bedding is often simply chipped-up waste wood from other industries, we have no way to determine what the drying standards were. Therefore, even if a bedding has been kiln-dried, we have no guarantees that it was done to remove a sufficient amount of VOCs from the wood... and remember, the process is focusing on removing water, not other compounds. We could say “the process removed 10 grams of phenols” BUT can we confirm how much is left? Not without analyzing the wood, the release rate of VOCs during the process... and thereby shifting the industry focus from water to the compounds. In the end, all we know is that there is a “kiln-dried wood” stamp on the package, but that bit doesn’t really help us at all. The best it does is change our statement that “it’s definitely not safe to use” to “there’s no guarantee it’s safe to use.”


What about the people who claim that pine or cedar doesn’t affect their hamsters?
Well, I can definitely promise that their hamsters aren’t special. They don’t have some amazing immune system that can fight off things that harm other hamsters. The best way I can explain is through an analogy. We all know that smoking is harmful, correct? Some people react immediately to it - asthma, reduced lung capacity, inflamed throat and lungs. But not everyone shows those symptoms, or some show them later on. BUT even though someone may not get asthma attacks from smoking, we still know that the smoke is damaging the cells in their lungs. In the same way, even if there are no visible reactions to the abietic or plicatic acid, we still know that some amounts are being inhaled. We still know that it will cause cell death - even in small amounts, it’s still happening - and that eventually the damage will build up. And we know from the studies cited above that once that damage occurs, there’s no guarantee of recovery, even after several years. Therefore, even if you can’t see symptoms from the damage, that damage is still occurring.

Some of those sources are old. Are they still worth reading?
The quick answer to that is YES. Just because a study is old does not make it invalid.
The in-depth answer is that it depends on what you’re looking for. For example, the fact that cedar contains plicatic acid has not changed in the years since it was discovered. The tree would have to evolve for that study to become invalid. Similarly, the fact that abietic acid is cytotoxic has not changed. It’s still going to damage cells regardless whether it’s 1980 or 2013. Now what can change are things like occupational studies. A study on woodworkers in 1974 can tell us that wood dust is a carcinogen because woodworkers were getting sinus cancer. BUT that doesn’t mean that today’s woodworkers get sinus cancer, because now we have OSHA and EPA standards for air quality and working environment. However, the wood dust is still dangerous, even if the woodworkers are now protected from it.