pet connection

Just as last year’s pet food recall served as a dramatic wake-up call about the massive safety gaps in the American food supply, particularly as regards imported products, pets are also serving as a warning about environmental contamination that may be affecting human health. From USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise (one of the best of the reporters who covered the pet food recall as well):

An environmental group has tested dogs and cats for chemical exposure and found some levels much higher than in humans.

The analysis, being released today by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group today, found levels of brominated flame retardants (used in furniture, fabrics and electronics) in cats 23 times higher than in humans, and mercury levels (likely from fish in pet foods) five times higher. In dogs, levels of perfluorinated chemicals (from stain- and grease-proof coatings) were 2.4 times higher than in people. Overall, 35 chemicals in dogs and 46 in cats were found.

The research used blood and urine samples from 35 dogs and 37 cats collected at Hanover Animal Hospital in Mechanicsville, Va., in December and January. Results represent average levels. Samples had to be pooled because “lab methods require a larger sample than any single animal could provide,” says EWG’s Jane Houlihan.

The testing “raises tantalizing questions,” says Larry Glickman, a professor of environmental health at Purdue University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in West Lafayette, Ind. “These things are just too controversial to ignore.”

Glickman says that “we’ll need to figure out how widespread this contamination is, where’s it coming from and whether it’s associated with adverse health events.”

The article is here.

From the Environmental Working Group’s media release, putting it all in context:

“Like humans, pets are also exposed to toxic chemicals on a daily basis, and as this investigation found, are contaminated at higher levels,” said Jane Houlihan, VP for Research at EWG. “The presence of chemicals in dogs and cats sounds a cautionary warning for the present and future health of children as well. This study demonstrating the chemical body burden of dogs and cats is a wake-up call for stronger safety standards from industrial chemical exposures that will protect all members of our families, including our pets.”

“This study is valuable in that it used pet animals that live in nearly fifty percent of all US households as environmental sentinels to measure the level of contamination with a wide variety of industrial chemicals that have also been shown to be present in human tissue. Because pet animals tend to have similar or higher concentrations of these chemicals in their body than humans, epidemiological studies of pets can be used to identify potential adverse health effects at a lower cost and in a much shorter period of time than it would take to perform similar studies in humans,” said Dr. Larry Glickman – a leading veterinarian and distinguished scientist who for the past three decades conducted research in veterinary epidemiology.

EWG also has tips for pet owners on how to minimize their exposure to contaminants.