Many of those links are the same ones that others on here have posted before. It would do anyone well to actually read all of what they write and take into consideration who is writing them and what they are associated with.
Then to remain fair and balanced try Googling for the opposite (i.e cedar+"not toxic") and you'll see there are plenty of opposing points of view. It's been several months since I took the time to list a bunch of links of my own that I found on the internet. If you want, you can do a search on here for cedar and me as the Author and you'll probably find it.
In that post I even quoted several statements from I'm pretty sure some of those same links you listed that proved their claims were just conclusions they had drawn based on presuppositions. If memory serves me correctly it was the Rat Fan Club site. And then of course there is the classic line that I just love that says even though there are no outward signs of problems, it's still there but you would need to have an indepth toxicological examination of the internal organs to see it. Yeah right! Like we are going to do that.
Now we have a third person who has given first hand account of the non-affects of cedar on their animals - including a long line of precedence with other family members and neighbors. Dare I think that will make any more difference?
Let me see if I can put an end to this debate (although I seriously doubt it) by a simple pointing back to what I said about the EPA in my first reply. Are we to believe that the EPA who now regulates arsenic in the water to 10ppb (parts per billion) when for years and years and years it was 50ppb, would let such a "toxic" material to be used in such a haphazardly way as to let anyone under the sun buy it from the shelf and use it however they choose? When everything under the sun is regulated to death? When everything under the sun has to have a warning label on it IF it has the SLIGHTEST possibility of doing harm????? When we have to have every single ingredient with the exact amount of that ingredient listed on whatever we buy? And yet, any of us can walk into a store, buy however much cedar we want, and use it however we wish? Oh yeah, it's bound to be really toxic!
People were drinking the water with arsenic levels at 50ppb for decades, perhaps centuries, and yet the American lifespan kept getting longer. Somehow I think we'll all be around just as long as ever even though we are coming into contact with cedar. And I think our birds will too.
If I thought for a second that I could end all this hoopla over cedar by doing an experiment, I would put FRESH 100% cedar shavings in with my Day-olds, in the coop, and in the nesting boxes and then report the findings. But somebody would still find a way to say, "Well, the damage is there you just can't see it." Or, you just didn't do this or that right or long enough or whatever.
Chicken Little thought the sky was falling in but that didn't make it so. Animal-Rights whackos think animals should have lawyers and the same rights as humans. But that don't make it so. Folks have known for a long, long time that cedar is a natural insectide (it keeps the bugs away) and that it has a smell that stays for a long time but to say it's toxic - nope, that just don't make it so.
And with that, I think this dead horse has been beat enough.
God Bless,
