A Facebook post claims that all Amazon boxes are sprayed with toxic pesticides to kill rodents that can cause chemical burns on the tongues of cats, as well as a number of other potential symptoms including fever, lethargy and shallow breathing.
The post includes a photo of what appears to be a cat’s tongue with swollen red marks. Text alongside says: “Emergency medical intervention will be necessary, in all cases, to prevent certain death” and warns cat owners to wash their hands anytime they handle Amazon boxes and keep the boxes far away from cats.
Amazon does not spray all its boxes with toxic pesticides
Similar stories appeared around December 2020 across social media. American fact checking organisation Snopes investigated the claim, tracing it back to a woman called Alicia Plant as the person who first shared the pictures of the injured cat.
Ms Plant had alleged her cat received chemical burns after it licked Amazon boxes. Snopes contacted Ms Plant who said she had deleted the photo from social media and the matter was being handled between her and the retailer. A spokesperson for Amazon at the time told Snopes that Amazon did not have a policy of spraying boxes with rodenticide or insecticide, stating it uses the same boxes that “every other manufacturer uses.”
Amazon has confirmed this is still the case as of 5 October 2021.
Snopes also reported that Amazon “could not rule out the possibility that Amazon boxes could be cross-contaminated by chemicals from other sources, such as disinfectants used to clean out airplane holds or rodenticides used at various warehouse storage facilities around the world.”