I'm a little older than some folks here, and I can pretty much assure you before the advent of "modern science" people weren't all stupid... Maybe some of us were, but lets be honest that hasn't changed and most likely never will.
When I was a kid back around 1965, I had a mouse live nearly 3 years on ceder shavings in an aquarium... And why did we use ceder back then? Because ceder killed mites, and mites killed rodents and there was no Revolution or vets that saw pet mice that anyone's mom would take their kids pet mouse to back then. Without ceder shavings, there might not have been many pet rodents.
And by the way from more recent experience mice don't seem to live any longer without the ceder shavings... So really people weren't ignorant, there was a reason for what they did... With Revolution and ivermectin, I suppose no one needs to "risk" using ceder bedding, but there were pet shops that used it long after most people switched away from ceder because they didn't want to treat their rodents with more expensive medications and the old time store owners knew exactly what they were doing and why... The risks were generally low and the rewards high.
I've seen long lived reptiles that are well over 20 years old still living on pine bedding. And I've had other furry critters living on pine before paper bedding that lived long perfectly normal life spans. No, I'm not the type that changes bedding overly often, but I don't let it get too tragically bad either and I always let the dust settle before I put animals back into their enclosures... I also store my pine bedding open to the air in a spare room, not a basement or attic where it can get moldy. I buy it in bulk and most likely the pine has been exposed to dry air for several months on average before I use it. So it doesn't smell like pine anymore...
At the advise of our vet, due to our rat having a tumor, I use paper bedding mostly now... the paper was less likely to irritate the tumors, but the switch wasn't made for fear of phenols. I just bought the stuff on sale in bulk and have some left...
Am I suggesting that phenols are good for rodents.... absolutely not! But also basing my comments on years of experience suggesting that the risks are overstated by an industry that would rather sell the vastly more expensive paper products. I might add that many years ago I worked in a facility that made tobacco and paper products and I saw the kinds of chemicals used to turn pulp into paper and I can assure you the process involved both caustic and toxic chemicals. I sure wouldn't want my kid eating paper or breathing paper dust. Maybe there's a better way of making paper now, it's been a few decades, but I doubt wood dissolves into a slurry and turns white by itself even today.
As to the idea that poisons work faster because animals have a shorter life span, I certainly can't say my experience suggests that at all. One would think as rats live only a tiny fraction of a human lifespan they should die much faster from substances like alcohol poisoning... when in fact rats metabolize alcohol much faster than humans. And yes, I've watched a rat drink a whole room of young adults under the table... to the point she was the last one standing grooming people that had passed out. By about 1:00 PM the next day she was fully recovered from her hangover and on the go again. I'm also not advocating drinking with your rats... Oddly, neither of our current rats drink... but Fuzzy Rat loved tequila, anything over 80 proof and beer, she wasn't much on wine (of course in tiny amounts relative to her size) But if someone put down a shot glass, she, for sure, would make sure to get the drop left on the bottom and follow the glass around the table, if need be and would be the first to soak up any spilled beer and at a party with young people she did better at getting booze than I would have liked.
So no, just because an animal lives a shorter time than humans, it would be very wrong to assume that they would be poisoned more quickly than humans.... Body weight would definitely be a factor as related to the concentration of the toxin, depending on the toxin and the particular animal's ability to metabolize it, but lifespan doesn't strike me as particularly relevant... If a low level of phenols would take 10 years to adversely affect an animal that normally only lives two years, I'd say it becomes irrelevant... An oncologist once told me that cancer will eventually kill everyone if they live long enough... a slightly disturbing thought, but there might be some truth to it.
Sure, it's wrong to discount modern science. I'm not suggesting that folks go back to ceder (unless they have no other treatment for mites available). Nor should folks switch back to pine if they are concerned. I'm just saying that all of us older folks weren't stupid and before and since the "phenol scare" we used/use pine for many years without any noticeable ill effects.
Seriously, go ask your parents and grandparents who had small animals before paper bedding... and you aren't likely to hear many tragic bedding stories from way back then... mice, gerbils, rats, hamsters and herps lived just as long and were just as healthy when I was a kid as they are now... it might be just a minor glitch of memory, but I actually recall them being healthier and living longer.
Always, keep in mind that science is good at generating valid data, but that data then becomes interpreted. Sometimes relevant study methods aren't real world and even when they are the data can be misinterpreted to sell product or advance an agenda or just scaled out of proportion into a panic. Dozens if not hundreds of generations of rats lived on ceder and pine bedding for decades. We can debate whether it was optimal and perhaps it wasn't, but you can't revise history because of modern science either... Rats lived normal healthy lives back then as they do now... you can't just discount a lifetime of experience or longer because of some study that flies in the face of real world experience.
A very wise friend of my once said that most good debates are between two people that are both right. This is one of those debates. I can't honestly say that I know how pine bedding might affect a rat with respiratory issues, because despite using ceder and pine bedding since the mid 1960's I've still never had an animal with respiratory issues... except once when I let the bedding get moldy in the basement... so from experience, I can say that isn't a good idea.