Secondhand Smoke and Pets

Parts excerpted from the New York Post

March 7, 2004 -- Of all the compelling reasons to quit smoking, this one should make pet lovers sit up and take notice: there's ample scientific evidence to suggest that secondhand cigarette smoke causes cancer in pets.

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, veterinarians from Tufts University found that cats whose owners smoked were three times as likely to develop lymphoma, the most common feline cancer.