- Toxins and Your Pet
- Overview of how toxins affect your pets
- Will carcinogens harm my pet?
- Nicotine's harmful effects on your pet
- Smoke exposure and risk of cancer in pets
- How pesticides can affect your pet
- Cannabis intoxication in pets
- Interpreting news about carcinogens
NICOTINE’S HARMFUL EFFECTS ON YOUR PET
Short-term effects – Upon reaching the lungs, nicotine rapidly enters the bloodstream and then goes to the brain. Inside the brain, it triggers various chemical reactions that stimulate the release of adrenaline from the adrenal glands. Adrenaline elevates blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate. Nicotine also triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, which stimulates the pleasure centers making smokers feel active and re-energized.
Long-term effects – Prolonged nicotine consumption through cigarette smoke can have widespread damaging effects on the heart, lung, kidney, and reproductive systems. Nicotine also contributes to the hardening of the blood vessels, which obstructs the blood, leading to a heart attack or stroke. Nicotine and its derivatives can cause a wide range of cancers, including cancer of the lungs, mouth, esophagus, larynx (voice box), throat, bladder, kidney, liver, stomach, pancreas, colon, and rectum. It can also lead to a blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia.
Exposure to nicotine in pets can lead to similar harmful effects.
What are the signs of nicotine toxicity?
A single cigarette contains 9 to 30 milligrams of nicotine, and a cigar has 15 to 40 milligrams. Exposure to nicotine doses ranging from 20 to 100 milligrams can be fatal to dogs and cats. Nicotine toxicity can also result from directly ingesting nicotine products, such as cigarette butts. Fortunately, most pets will avoid eating cigarette butts due to the unpleasant taste and smell. However, chewing tobacco in any form can be a potential threat to a pet’s health. If your pet ingests tobacco-based products, we recommend you contact your vet as soon as possible rather than wait for symptoms to appear.
Repeated exposure to nicotine can lead to numerous signs and symptoms in your pet. If the following symptoms appear, these may be signs that your pet is suffering from tobacco or nicotine poisoning:
- Loss of balance – Loss of balance in animals, called ataxia, can appear as unsteady or uncoordinated movements.
- Respiratory distress – Respiratory distress can appear as a change in your pet’s typical breathing pattern (faster or slower), wheezing sounds, or both.
- Diarrhea – While diarrhea can indicate digestive or dietary issues, nicotine poisoning can also cause diarrhea.
- Vomiting – Nicotine strongly activates the vomiting center in the brain, resulting in spontaneous vomiting. Although seeing your pet sick can be upsetting, vomiting helps expel the nicotine product, preventing further nicotine absorption, and reducing its toxic effects.
- Elevated heart rate – The resting heart rate in cats is 120-140 beats per minute and 70 to120 beats per minute in dogs. High-dose exposure to nicotine can elevate your pet’s heart rate.
- Excess drooling – Because the root causes of excessive drooling vary, your vet must identify the cause and provide the appropriate treatment.
- Seizures – Seizures in dogs and cats closely resemble human seizures, where signs include collapsing, muscle twitching, and drooling.
Although these symptoms may indicate many things, knowing the signs of nicotine poisoning will help determine if your pet has possibly encountered nicotine. Your vet will be able to confirm why your pet is showing these signs and can recommend how best to treat your pet.
The Pet Cancer Foundation’s Website Editorial team is comprised of veterinarians, veterinary oncologists, and veterinary technicians, as well as scientific writers and editors who have attained their PhD’s in the life sciences, along with general editors and research assistants. All content found in this section goes through an extensive process with multiple review stages, to ensure this extended resource provides pet families with the most up-to-date information publicly available.
The team listing of those contributing to the information on this page is here:
Keep Your Pets Healthy Editorial Team
Last Updated: October 12, 2022
The Pet Cancer Foundation’s medical resource for pet owners is protected by copyright.
For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.
The Pet Cancer Foundation’s Medical Illustration team is comprised of medical illustration specialists and graphic designers that work in consultation with our team of experts to create the medical art found throughout our website. Though not all medical concepts require the assistance of imagery, when a page does contain a medical illustration, credit to the artist and our medical art director will be noted here.
The Pet Cancer Foundation’s medical imagery is protected by copyright and cannot be used without prior approval that includes a mutually signed licensing agreement. Please review our Content Usage Policy.
The following sources were referenced to write the content on this page:
Berendt, M, Gredal, H & Alving, J 2004, ‘Characteristics and phenomenology of epileptic partial seizures in dogs: similarities with human seizure semiology’, Epilepsy Res, vol. 61, no. 1-3, pp. 167-173.
Bertone, ER, Snyder, LA & Moore, AS 2002, ‘Environmental tobacco smoke and risk of malignant lymphoma in pet cats’, Am J Epidemiol, vol. 156, no. 3, pp. 268-273.
Bloomfield, MAP, Pepper, F, Egerton, A, Demjaha, A, Tomasi, G, Mouchlianitis, E, Maximen, L, Veronese, M, Turkheimer, F, Selvaraj, S & Howes, OD 2014, ‘Dopamine function in cigarette smokers: an [¹⁸F]-DOPA PET study’, Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 39, no. 10, pp. 2397-2404.
Center for Veterinary Medicine, 2021. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, viewed 5 June 2022, https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/be-smoke-free-and-help-your-pets-live-longer-healthier-lives#nicotine.
Hackendahl, NC, & Sereda, CW 2004, ‘The dangers of nicotine ingestion in dogs’, Vet Med, vol. 99, no. 3, pp. 218-224.
Jensen, K, Afroze, S, Munshi, MK, Guerrier, M & Glaser, SS 2012, ‘Mechanisms for nicotine in the development and progression of gastrointestinal cancers’, Transl Gastrointest Cancer, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 81-87.
Mishra, A, Chaturvedi, P, Datta, S, Sinukumar, S, Joshi, P & Garg, A 2015, ‘Harmful effects of nicotine’, Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 24-31.
Novotny, TE, Hardin, SN, Hovda, LR, Novotny, DJ, McLean, MK & Khan, S 2011, ‘Tobacco and cigarette butt consumption in humans and animals’, Tob Control, vol. 20, no. Suppl 1, pp. i17-i20.
Schrey, CF & Joeken, H 2017, Handbook of Symptoms in Dogs and Cats: Assessing Common Illnesses by Differential Diagnosis, 3 edn, 5m Books Ltd, Essex.
Sharp, CR & Rozanski, EA 2013, ‘Physical examination of the respiratory system’, Top Companion Anim Med, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 79-85.
Wong, HPS, Yu, L, Lam, EKY, Tai, EKK, Wu, WKK & Cho, C-H 2007, ‘Nicotine promotes colon tumor growth and angiogenesis through β-adrenergic activation’, Toxicol Sci, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 279-287.
The Pet Cancer Foundation’s medical resource for pet owners is protected by copyright.
For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.