The Hidden Dangers of Zinc Phosphide for Your Pets
Is the product that you’ve been using to control the rodents in your home dangerous to your pets? The short answer is yes. But what are the potential risks and how can you avoid harm to your furry friends? In this episode, we explore the ins and outs of zinc phosphide, rodenticides, and the steps we can take to protect our beloved pets.
When ingested by dogs, cats, or any other animal, regardless of its form (such as gray pellets, powders, grains, or pastes), zinc phosphide can lead to severe toxicity. The process begins with the zinc transforming into a highly toxic phosphine gas within the stomach, causing symptoms like nausea and vomiting. Listen in as we go over clinical signs to watch out for, what to do if your pet has ingested this, and what your veterinarian will do to help your pet.
What You’ll Learn:
What zinc phosphide is and what products it is in.
What happens to our pets if they ingest zinc phosphide.
Which animals are at risk of being poisoned from this ingredient.
The most common signs that your pet has zinc phosphide toxicity.
Why you should not feed your pets if they’ve ingested this toxin.
What your veterinarian may do to help your pet.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“It is important to seek veterinary attention immediately if you suspect your pet has ingested a toxic amount of the zinc phosphide.” - Tyler Sugerman
“Don’t give charcoal to your pets at home. Just bring them in if there is an issue so that we can make them vomit up as much as we possibly can.” - Tyler Sugerman
“Time is of the essence when it comes to treating zinc phosphide poisoning.” - Tyler Sugerman
Resources Mentioned:
ASPCA 888-426-4435 or pet poison helpline 855-764-7661
Read The Transcript:
Welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Tyler, or you can call me Suggs. This podcast is about educating pet parents about what is going on with their furry little loved ones. As an emergency veterinarian, I understand how hard it is to explain complex diseases in terms that are understandable for pet parents in a few short minutes before the next critical case comes in.
In this podcast, we can dive deeper into understanding of what our pets are going through and break down those complex medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information.
Just a quick disclaimer: this podcast is for informational purposes only. This is not meant to be a diagnosis of your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things.
Remember, we are all practicing veterinary medicine, and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options. The information I provide here is to help pet parents, and it's not related to my place of work. I'm here for you guys to provide free information and knowledge.
If you like our podcast, consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or someone else who has pets and could benefit from this.
Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
Tyler Sugerman: Hey everybody, welcome back to Vetsplanation where we discuss important topics related to veterinary medicine, and I'm your host, Dr. Sugerman or as most of my technicians call me, Suggs, which you're welcome to as well. And today we're going to be talking about zinc phosphide toxicity in our pets.
This can be in dogs or cats, it can also be in other animals as well. If you have pet rabbits, it can affect them, honestly it could affect pretty much any mammal. So, let's start by defining what zinc phosphide is and why it can be toxic to our pets.
Zinc phosphide, it's a common ingredient that's found in various rodenticides that are used to control rodents. They're commonly found in Mol Baits and Gopher Baits, but they could just say on there rodenticides, or I've even found it in some insecticides as well. You want to make sure that you look at the back of the package to see if it says zinc phosphide or any phosphide as the active ingredient.
The most common phosphide is going to be zinc phosphide, but you can also find aluminum phosphide and magnesium phosphides as well. They're all just as dangerous. Typically, you're going to find them as gray pellet, or you can find them as powders, grains, pastes as well. They come in lots of different forms.
And when any form is ingested by any mammal, but mostly, we are talking about dogs and cats here. So, any dog or cat, it can lead to a severe toxicity. This is a pretty deadly rodenticide or morbid when our pets get into it.
So, how does zinc phosphide cause toxicity in dogs? Alright, this is going to be a little bit complicated, but first, what happens is that it's ingested in through the stomach. So, it becomes a very toxic gas after that, it's something called a phosphine gas. This gas usually makes them very nauseous and make them start vomiting because it's just so caustic, it’s just so irritating to their stomach. But that gas is actually extremely toxic to the pet and to us.
So, if that pet vomits in your house or in your car, anywhere, you want to open the windows immediately, you should put fans on the area at the bottom on the ground so that it can blow all of those fumes away because the gas itself is really dense and it falls to the ground, and air is very light and so it just blows over it. So, that's why you want it on the ground so that way it can help blow over all of that stuff.
But the gas will smell like a decaying fish smell, or a garlic smell, and it's extremely toxic to people, it's extremely toxic to the other animals if it's inhaled. So, you want to make sure that you have those windows open and make it very well-ventilated.
If you are exposed to the gas, then it is also recommended that you go seek medical attention or call the human poison hotline so that you can talk to them to see if you need to go in.
But anyways, so after it becomes this really toxic gas, that gas is absorbed into the stomach and absorbed into the lungs, especially after they vomited. They inhale it and then it's absorbed into the lungs, which could cause really serious damage to the organs like the liver, the kidneys, the heart, and the lungs.
So, what are some of the clinical signs that our pets are going to show once they've ingested this toxin? The most common one is going to be vomiting. A lot of times, they'll vomit up blood, they might have diarrhea and diarrhea with blood in it, severe abdominal pain. So, their belly will just be painful, a lot of times they arch over. They'll be lethargic, they might have tremors or seizures and could have some pretty difficult breathing.
Clinical signs that can usually occur within minutes after ingesting. It's that toxic, it's just so fast. There are some that can't occur up to 24 hours afterwards. It's a rare thing to have happen, but it is possible.
And then, unfortunately, with severe cases, death can occur within about five hours after exposure, especially if there's no intervention that's been taken. It is important to seek veterinary attention immediately if you suspect that your pet has ingested a toxic amount of the zinc phosphate.
Time is of the essence when it comes to treating this condition because we want to help minimize all of those potential harms to our pet's health.
One other thing, do not feed them. A lot of people want to feed either bread or milk, we don't want to do that. Sorry, you might hear my dogs in the background, I swear that's not because of the bread or the milk.
You don't want to feed bread or milk, that's really important. You don't want to feed anything, no foods at all because what this likes to do in the stomach is make the stomach more acidic. That toxin wants a very acidic environment.
So, if we feed, that actually makes more acid, that builds up into the stomach because the stomach wants to digest down all of that food and it makes it more toxic so that gas is more likely to form and we're going to make more of that toxin if we feed them. So, don't feed them any foods.
What you can give them though is calcium carbonate, which is otherwise known as tums. That's okay because what tums does is it does the opposite of making it acidic, it makes it more basic or neutralizes it so that way, that toxin can't break down as well.
That would be perfectly fine, to give them tums and then bring them down immediately. That's actually extremely helpful, especially when they get there. So, hopefully, they can decrease the amount of toxin that's in there, and then bring them in immediately.
Again, roll the windows down when you're bringing them in case they vomit, turn the air conditioning on so that way, if there's any toxic fumes in there, hopefully, you won't be breathing them in.
And then when you're on your way, also, if you can bring the box or the receipt from whatever it is, because there are some that are going to say rodenticides and we don't know if it's going to be one of these phosphides that's the rodenticides, it could be any of them.
There are lots of different ones and this is going to be the most detrimental to people and to our staff, also to your pet if we do the wrong things. So, we want to know exactly what to do before we start.
When you bring them in, we are going to want to make them vomit. We'll usually bring them into an outside area though if possible. If it's a dog, we'll bring them into a potty yard or outside to make them vomit because of the fact that gas is so toxic, we don't want that gas to be building up in the clinic because it's going to affect every other pet that's in there, plus all of the people that are in there as well. We want to try to put them outside.
If it's a cat, obviously, we don't want them outside if we don't have to, so a lot of times we'll try to make them vomit into a carrier or vomit into a room that's just really well ventilated. That way, we don't have to worry about that as well.
But also, on the way down, if you have more than one person ideally, having you call the ASPCA or the pet poison helpline, so that that way we can get a case number. You call them, they'll get all the information from you.
They are going to charge a $95 fee if I remember correctly now. But it's really important again for us to know how to treat your pet appropriately because it depends on how much they got. There's lots of different ones, plus there's also lots of different concentrations of it as well. So, we want to make sure we're treating them appropriately.
And then they'll give you a case number which you want to give to us immediately so we can then call pet poison helpline or ASPCA poison control and figure out what our next steps are going to be.
It also can mean the difference between us not needing to do anything. Maybe they just didn't get into a toxic enough amount and us hospitalizing them. Because if you bring them in for zinc phosphide and you didn't call pet poison, then I wouldn't know if that is a toxic enough dose to hospitalize them, and we might hospitalize them for no reason, so I would suggest still calling.
Alright, now let's talk about how phosphide toxicity is treated in our pets. So, treatment, first of all, we usually will give them an antacid first. So, something again to help coat the esophagus, that's going to be more basic so that way we don't have that acidic environment that's going to make things worse. We'll probably give them an antacid and then we'll start induced vomiting.
We want them to vomit as much of that up as possible. It is always still a bit of a risk because again, we have all of those toxins. So, just giving that antacid is the best thing that we can do to try to help avoid those toxins going in the lungs as well.
We'll usually administer activated charcoal, just one dose of it, and I know I've said this on other podcasts, but you don't have to give some charcoal at home. That actually is not going to help until after everything is out, and we don't want them to aspirate it as well. Don't give charcoal at home, just bring them in so that we can do that after we've made them vomit up as much as we possibly can.
So, that activated charcoal will try to help absorb the toxin, but also just to push it out of the body as quick as possible so that it doesn't absorb into that GI tract or into the stomach and the intestines essentially.
We'll usually put them on IV fluids so it can flush all the rest of that out of their system before it gets to those other organs and causes a problem. And then in some cases, some pets will need other supportive care depending on how bad they are, such as oxygen therapy or maybe medication to help control tremors or seizures.
Diagnostics will usually be performed as well, so depends on what those clinical signs are, but almost always blood work will be one of them. Otherwise, there'll be X-rays, depending if they're having trouble breathing or an ECG, if they're having arrhythmias of their heart or if their heart is really fast or their heart is beating really slowly, then an ECG might be done as well.
Now, what is the prognosis of this? If the patient is clinically normal, they don't have any signs for 12 hours, then the prognosis is actually really good, that's fantastic, usually they'll be able to go home. For me, I see them at night, so by the time morning rolls around, if they're doing well and show no clinical signs, then I'll usually send them home.
But if the pet is affected in the beginning but doesn't worsen for 24 hours, that's still a good sign, they're still probably going to be able to go home. But we usually will keep them for 24 hours at least in the hospital, and then as soon as we don't have signs for 24 hours, then they go home.
It's the pets who have the multiple organs that are affected. Those are the ones that have a more guarded prognosis because now we have multiple things that we have to fix, especially if it's like the lungs are involved, we have to keep them in oxygen for a long time. This could be days or even a week or so before they end up going home.
And unfortunately, not all of them will go home. They did do a study saying that if they'd gotten into a phosphide that it was about a 98.5% success rate, like 98.5% of them did go home, so that's always a good thing.
And then what kind of rechecks are we going to need? Usually, the pet's blood work just needs to be rechecked about three to five days after the ingestion to make sure that those liver values are okay. So, make sure you do reschedule that in about three to five days so that we can make sure that those liver values are okay, and they don't go really sky high.
Alright, that's all for our zinc phosphide toxicity. So, I'm going to talk about my animal fact real quick. I picked axolotls today. So, axolotls, they are amphibians that look a lot like a salamander and they're originally from Mexico. They are a very unique amphibian though.
Most amphibians undergo metamorphosis. So, if you think of a tadpole that turns into a frog, that's a metamorphosis, it went through a different form, essentially. Axolotls though never outgrow their larval or juvenile form. So, if we compared that a frog and tadpole again, that means that the tadpole would just stay a tadpole essentially. So, that axolotl just stays as that true first axolotl form.
They also have a really cool superpower I think; they can regenerate any damaged limbs. They can regenerate their heart, they can regenerate spinal cords and they can even regenerate parts of their brain without having substantial scarring. If we have a scar from something, we can't regenerate it, which they actually can regenerate them because they don't form this scarring.
That's made them a really common research subject for biologists because if we could use that for humans, they would love to be able to do that.
Axolotls are on the critically endangered list though, which is weird. When I had read that at first, I didn't know that, but it's weird because if you go to reptile shows, we see them all the time, and I would think that if we saw them all the time at the reptile shows, we would probably have a lot of them. Well, the axolotls though, you'll see them as mostly a grayish brown color versus the ones that are captive red, those are the ones that are pets.
They are mostly at the reptile shows, like you'll see them as pink color or pinkish white or just even a white color. So, did you know though I didn't know this either, that it's also illegal in some states to own them?
The reason why is because they're worried that people will release them into the wild and because they figure out later after they get them that they actually live for 10 to 15 years in captivity, and they feel like that's too long to take care of this axolotl.
So, if they get released into the wild, they could potentially mate with salamanders and start breeding into this species that our ecosystem is just not prepared for. Also, as of the last estimate, there were only about 50 to 1000 of them in the wild. Luckily, the Mexican government and many conservationists and conservation organizations have been trying to bring back those populations.
They're actually really cool species, my friend had one, they're very cute. You can check out a video of them and their cute little smile at National Geographic. I found a really cool video of them there. I do think that you should look them up if you have never seen them.
Alright guys, that's all for today's episode of Vetsplanation, thank you for listening again. And if you have any questions or topics that you want us to cover, please contact us. It's suggs@vetsplanationpodcast.com. And until next time, keep your pets healthy and safe, thanks guys.
Thanks for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hi, feel free to email me at suggs@vetsplanationpodcast.com.
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Thank you all again for listening and we'll see you back here next week.