Introduction

Excellent texts on veterinary toxicology and poisoning of domestic animals and free-living species are available.^1–6 This short chapter makes no attempt to provide a guide to poisons and their effects, but merely addresses a number of practical issues related to the investigation of alleged poisonings.

The first issue in suspect ‘poisoning’ cases is why poisoning is being considered. Are there aspects of the history that place poisoning high on the differential diagnosis list? – for example, 5000 dead fish downstream of a chemical plant. Or is ‘poisoning’ a tentative diagnosis based on inability to find an alternative cause of death in an otherwise healthy looking animal?

The source of the toxic product may, initially, be obscure, as in the case of percutaneous absorption of phenolics from pentachlorophenol-treated wood shaving used for bedding.⁷ Similarly, suspicious deaths in cage birds may be related to inadvertent poisoning caused by overheating of cooking ware coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) or by acrolein or other vapours associated with cooking fats and oils.⁸

Toxicity related to environmental contamination may be a natural phenomenon or one linked to the ingestion of discarded human-made objects such as shotgun pellets, lead fishing weights or vehicle batteries. Other poisonings result from carelessness, such as allowing dogs to have access to slug baits or cats to lap spilled ethylene glycol. On farms, spilled insecticides or over-enthusiastic application of agrochemicals pose a threat to wildlife.

Malicious poisoning of wildlife and domestic animals – raptors, foxes, dogs and cats – is depressingly common and often involves agrochemicals or rodenticides. These deliberate poisonings rely on the target species, or individual, taking bait. Examples are dead rabbits contaminated with carbofuran (Fig. 15.1), or eggs laced with strychnine or organophosphorus insecticide. These baits are, however, indiscriminate and it may be a family dog out for a walk with the children that finds and consumes the poison.

Fig. 15.1 Note blue-coloured carbofuran granules in and around a hole in the side of a dead rabbit left on hillside as bait for raptors.

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