Corn Cob Cat Litter – Is Corn Cat Litter Bad for Cats?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in choosing a healthy litter for your cat.

While traditional clay litter is the most popular variety for fairly good reasons – it’s cheap and highly effective – there are arguments against its use.

Clay litter is produced through strip mining, a process that can temporarily scar the natural landscape. In addition to the environmental impact of clay litter production, the potential health impact is worth considering. Sodium bentonite clay litter (the kind that clumps) contains a considerable quantity of silica dust – which has been linked to upper respiratory issues.

When we recognize the potential dangers of clay cat litter, we enter the world of biodegradable “natural” alternatives. Note that ultimately, clay cat litter is a natural product itself. In this case, the natural label is more a marketing ploy than a genuine distinction.

One popular alternative is corn cob cat litter.

Touted as biodegradable, pure, and harmless, corn cob cat litter presents an intriguing combination of efficacy, an enticing environmental impact, and a dangerous dynamic with toxic mold.

So is this plant-based cat litter ultimately a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Let’s assess at the benefits and dangers of corn cob cat litter.

Let’s take a look at what’s good about corn cob cat litter.

The first of corn cob cat litter’s charms is its biodegradability. It’s made out of corn, corn, and nothing but corn. So it makes sense that it degrades into the earth just like a corn cob. If you’ve turned your back on clay litter based on its environmental impact, corn cob cat litter is a friendlier choice.

And then, there’s the dust issue – corn cob cat litter doesn’t produce dust. This means that your cat will breathe easily without inhaling carcinogenic silica dust.

Corn cob cat litter is soft and gentle on your cat’s toes, while being quite effective when it comes to containing odors and managing moisture. You can flush it down the toilet, too – which means that it’s a highly convenient cat litter choice.

Wet, warm corn cob cat litter is a great place to live if you’re bacteria, bugs, or mold. In other words, the litter box becomes dangerous the second that your cat starts using it. As soon as your cat breaks in the corn cat litter, it becomes a fertile environment for things that could make your cat sick. Very sick, in fact. Let’s talk about aflatoxins and how they’ve affected cats through corn cob cat litter.

A particularly concerning result of this is the growth of aflatoxin mold in corn cob cat litter. Reports from pet owners state that this mold growing in their cat’s litter box made their cats sick and even lead to death. Cornell’s Department of Animal Science says that: “the commodities with the highest risk of aflatoxin contamination are corn, peanuts and cottonseed.  Pre-harvest aflatoxin contamination of peanuts and corn is favored by high temperatures, prolonged drought conditions, and high insect activity; while post-harvest production of aflatoxins on corn and peanuts is favored by warm temperatures and high humidity.”

Aflatoxin mold loves growing in warm, wet corn. Corn cob cat litter manufacturers know that. That’s why manufacturers test their product before it hits the shelves. The problem is that the mold can appear later on, when the litter is in your house and in contact with your cat. 

Corn cob cat litter is a promising choice if you want an environmentally friendly cat litter that doesn’t produce dust. That said, toxic aflatoxin mold may love it just as much as you do. This means that a litter box full of it is a veritable breeding ground for this toxic mold. 

Aflatoxin mold poisoning can cause gastrointestinal distress, jaundice, anemia, and reproductive harm.

At this point, we’d shy away from using corn cob cat litter – it’s just not perfect. While it stands out in the crowd of biodegradable litters because of its ability to manage odor and moisture, the risk of aflatoxin mold poisoning just makes corn cob cat litter too dangerous for us to recommend in good conscience.

Frankly, we don’t know.

There’s a reason why clay cat litter is the most popular type: it’s effective, cheap, and easy to use. Corn cob cat litter ranks highly when it comes to efficacy, but not so well when you consider its potential for damaging health effects. That said, the other non-clay litters out there all have their warts. Pine litter can stick to your cat’s fur, wheat litter can be too sticky in the litter box, and some cats will outright reject a certain variety of cat litter.

All of the above listed varieties, though, are worth a shot. You may have to experiment with several varieties before you find the one that you and your cat love. Until then, we wish you the best!

The WildernessCatLady is crazy about happy, healthy cats fueled by nature. Start changing your cat’s life today with natural health solutions for adventurous cats at Wildernesscat.com. And while you’re here, go ahead and download our free PDF: 5 Natural Home Remedies for Cats.

Corn Cob Cat Litter – Is Corn Cat Litter Bad for Cats?

Nuclear Waste Leak Traced To --- Kitty Litter

You may well have heard that the most probably culprit for the Valentine’s Day radioactive leak was…kitty litter!

Yes. The wrong kitty litter was almost certainly employed to deal with some of the nuclear waste just lately disposed in the world’s only deep underground nuclear waste repository, close to Carlsbad in New Mexico. Cat litter has been used for decades in radiochemistry labs and nuclear facilities to stabilize specified radwastes, like liquid scintillation solutions, evaporator bottoms, and other resources that have nitrate salts in resolution.

Nitrate salt options can ignite when they dry out – which is why it is tough working with nitrate remedies in the lab and why you need to make sure they do not dry out, one thing many a chemistry pupil has discovered out the challenging way. So you need to stabilize nitrate options ahead of they dry out, or stop them from completely drying out.

Conventional cat litter is manufactured from numerous inorganic geologic silicate minerals like diatomaceous earth, zeolites or bentonites, materials that are outstanding in absorbing and stabilizing chemical species like nitrates, ammonia, and urea. This is the very purpose we use minerals for cat litter. Sadly, someone operating with this waste, just before it was to be shipped to WIPP, utilised a new “green” cat litter, manufactured with materials like wheat or corn. These natural litters do not have the silicate properties needed to chemically stabilize nitrate the appropriate way.

A photograph hunting in excess of the prime of nuclear waste emplaced at WIPP in drums, waste boxes and overpacks in Panel seven where the release of radioactive material took spot. One of these drums very likely had the incorrect kitty litter utilized to stabilize nitrate salts, which dried out and burst open the drum on Valentine’s Day. “Green” litter manufactured from wheat or corn does not have the very same chemical properties that standard mineral litters have. Discover the minimum quantity of disruption: the salt rock is intact, roof bolts are intact, the thin metal screening is intact, the plastic gaskets among containers are intact, the other drums appear intact, some MgO sacks that sit on best of the waste are disturbed, but the energy released does not seem to have been extremely huge. Supply: WIPP

We nevertheless require much more visual proof to be totally specified.  The drum considered to have burst is about ten rows back from the waste face. See photo of the waste panel in query. The Valentine’s Day occasion would seem to have originated from a spot exactly where that particular waste stream was placed.

Recall that WIPP, the only working geologic nuclear waste repository, had its 1st minor accident on Valentine’s Day after 15 years of ideal operations. It was a little release of radiation that did not and will not harm any person or have any environmental consequence. The volume of radiation released into the setting was a million occasions significantly less than any EPA level requiring action, so little that, in accordance to the EPA, we didn’t even have to report it.

Each drum going to WIPP is labeled, barcoded and tracked so we know in which they all are and exactly where they came from. We know which drums have been treated with this green litter. Some are stored at WIPP and some are stored at other areas.  We can fix this difficulty.

Because of this event, the basic public has turn into aware for the very first time in 15 years that the United States has a successful nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, recognized as WIPP. It will take a few months for the genuine story to get out, for absolutely everyone to understand that WIPP carried out excellently, that this was not the consequence of any security lapse at WIPP or any failure of the repository itself.  We need to have serious, intelligent discussion in this country about nuclear waste.

WIPP is presently licensed only for nuclear weapons waste, transuranic or TRU, but was created to hold any and all nuclear waste. WIPP is located a half-mile beneath the Earth in the enormous ten,000 square-mile Permian-age salt deposits of the Salado Formation inside of the Delaware Basin that cuts across southeastern New Mexico into west Texas.

The Salado has geological, physical, chemical, redox, thermal, and creep-closure properties that make it ideal for long-term waste disposal.  Prolonged-term in this case means better than 200 million years. Simply because it is the ideal area, and the best rock, to place nuclear waste, or anything at all you want isolated from the environment permanently, debate has continued on expanding its present mission to incorporate all nuclear waste. This Valentine’s Day event does not alter that. Rather, it demonstrates the wisdom of the geological and nuclear engineers who developed WIPP. It is fortunate that this drum was in WIPP and not anywhere else when it burst.

WIPP has disposed about 80,000 cubic meters of nuclear waste, some very hot, and has been working for 15 years with no incident.  The performance basis of WIPP is nevertheless outstanding.

When the occasion occurred all specialists began to examine anything that may well have brought on it, from the planning of drums for storage to the overall performance of WIPP.  The initial notion to come to thoughts was that some thing triggered a drum to open. The only thing we could come up with was that a massive slab of salt rock fell from the ceiling of Panel seven and crushed one or much more drums.

But that is undoubtedly not what occurred. Instead, nitrate salts in the incorrect litter possibly dried out sufficiently to burst open a drum, and some material was entrained in the airflow out of the room. Quickly, the underground Constant Air Keep track of alarmed, and the ventilation switched to HEPA filtration, permitting only a little quantity to get out and intersect 21 individuals and some air filters. The levels of Pu and Am launched have been a million instances less than any environmental concern, 1000′s of instances less than any health concern, and forty instances much less than ordinary background.

This is the by-item of currently being ready to see a single atom disintegrating. The sum was so insignificant that we couldn’t see it following the 1st check on the individuals that showed the original hit. We’ll maintain monitoring them, but there is not any concern.

So, as far WIPP itself goes – no wellness concern, no environmental concern, no security concern, and now no operational concern. The efficiency basis of WIPP is still excellent.

Nuclear Waste Leak Traced To --- Kitty Litter