Dear Ferret Folks- Yesterday, someone wrote >If a person/shelter is to put on their application for an adoption that >the potential adopter cannot smoke, do they also put a clause in saying >if the adopter drives a car they cannot adopt? Which is the lesser of >the two evils? Now, in saying that I do not smoke, but people very >close to me do, and though I do not agree with smoking I cannot say >that I am any better than them because I do drive a vehicle. Hmmmm. It is pretty unlikely that any of us ferret owner/drivers out there routinely back our car's exhaust pipe up to an open window of our house and let the car idle there for say, the six minutes at a time that it typically takes to burn a cigarette...perhaps twenty times over in a day (to represent a full pack. Forty times over in a day to represent two packs.) That *would* tend to make carbon monoxide, a gas found in both cigarettes and automobile exhaust a problem for any ferrets inside the largely closed environment of the house, as the writer suggested. I think perhaps that those who are hesitant to adopt a ferret to a household inside which someone actively smokes are more concerned with some of the other by products of cigarette smoking inside the largely closed environment of the house. These include, but are not limited to; acetone, ammonia, arsenic, benzene, benzopyrene, butane, cadmium, carbonyl sulfide, formaldehyde, hydrazine (ROCKET FUEL!) hydrogen cyanide, lead, nickel, nicotene, phenol, polonium 210(RADIOACTIVE!), propylene glycol, quinoline,tar, and turpentine. All of which are either carcinogenic, promote the growth of tumors, or are toxic. Trapped inside the poorly circulating environment of a home or apartment, these compounds, released multiple times per day and re-breathed, do present a greater risk to the occupants than does the air outside the home, befouled by cars. The risk is especially great for a little animal who takes a preportionately greater 'hit' than does a larger bodied human. And no, I don't hate smokers. I hate what smoking does to people. And if I operated a shelter, I don't think I would adopt to people who smoked in their house, because I wouldn't want the ferrets to get sick from second hand smoke. I'd be sad if that meant I couldn't adopt to some really nice people who wanted a ferret, but if they truly cared about the ferret they would understand. In 2005, we know how bad the cigarettes are. Not the people, the *cigarettes*. Alexandra in MA [Posted in FML issue 5031]