Bird safe candles?

[marie83]

As I've kept birds for roughly 14 years now I've done probably 100's of things your "not supposed to do" including burn candles, use febreeze, accidently overheat teflon pans etc and none of my birds have immediately died. That said I have learned about dangers as I have gone along and could have thought "oh its a load of rubbish cuz all mine have been fine" and carried on doing those things.

However I look at it as that somethings are not instantly bad, in humans smoking will not kill you just from having one or two, however smoking for a period of time might or at least make you very ill.
Also birds are pretty long lived so just because the bird doesn't instantly die or show signs of illness, you then change your habits because you learn that actually it might be bad after all, who is to say that in 10, 15, 30 years time that the bird doesn't then die from exposure from a product from years back. It just might be we dont see the corrolation because it was so long ago. Think of all the people sick from abestos now because they were exposed to it many years ago.
We can't be educated about absolutely everything and never will be but to not make use of the stuff that has already been learned about is irresponsible in my mind.

That said everything has the potential to be dangerous- take our parrots toys for instance but they serve a very important purpose, lighting a candle has no useful purpose to our birds, using febreeze when there are natural easy methods to make out homes smell good is a pointless risk to take in my opinion.

Am I over cautious? Yes in some ways, no in others. I try to weigh up the pro's and cons and find a balance which enriches my parrots lives without taking unnecessary risks but that too includes giving my family and I a quality of life.

[Eric&Rebecca]

I think its always best to not take the risk. If its ambiguous, don't risk it. To be honest none of these things are massive lifestyle changes. If I can't use candles, it doesn't bother me. It was just a general wonderment.

I think birds, like people, react to different things and have different levels of tolerance and sensitivity but to my mind why bother testing and risking that... Then you never have to find out