The main concern with pine and cedar wood shavings has to do with natural, volatile chemicals in the wood called phenols. If you open a bag of shavings and sniff, you can smell these aromatic oils. Phenols are known to cause damage to the rabbit's liver enzymes, and can alter the rabbit's ability to handle standard prescribed drugs. Rabbits who are constantly exposed to phenols, as when locked in a cage with wood shavings in the litter tray, are at great risk. By inhaling the fumes, the toxins pass through the lungs into the blood and are finally filtered through the liver. The rabbit's liver tries to remove the phenols by producing other enzymes that destroy them. This is a natural defense against environmental toxins that all animals share. Constant exposure to phenols causes rabbits to produce high quantities of the counteractive enzyme. This, in turn, decreases the effect of certain drugs, such as xylazine and ketamine, two of the most popular injectable anesthetics for rabbits. In a study of rodents, exposure to phenols caused drug efficiency to be decreased by 40 percent. Rabbits are already very limited in what kinds of drugs they can take safely, so exposing them to phenols puts them in a grave situation.
Phenols are not found in the same amounts in hardwoods such as aspen, so hardwood shavings are safer than softwood shavings, but may still contain enough volatile oils to cause liver damage.
If you must use softwood shavings, keep them in large, open, ventilated area, and get your bunny's blood checked every few months. Blood panels are now inexpensive since basic lab work is done in most veterinary offices.
How many times have you been to a pet store and seen yellow wood shavings in each of the cages? Even pet supply stores continue to carry this type of litter in the area of the store devoted to small animals. Litter manufacturers are doing rabbits a great disservice by continuing to print their picture on the packaging, and pet supply stores are not helping the situation, either. This author encourages readers to write letters to the editor of their local newspaper, to the manufacturers of pine and cedar shavings, and to pet supply stores educating them about the dangers of their products to rabbits, and encouraging them to change their packaging and marketing scheme.
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