Environmental Information

[SkySoaringMagpie]

This website is US based but looks like it could be a useful clearing house for information about toxic chemicals effect on pets:

http://www.petsfortheenvironment.org

Quote from the site:

When I teamed up with Environmental Working Group to test the chemical body burden of pets, we didn’t really know what to expect. EWG has led the way in studies of human body burden, and we figured the results might look a lot alike since pets live and play in the same homes as humans. What the scientists actually found was that dogs and cats have much higher levels than humans of 43 different chemicals, and comparable levels of many, many others. We tested for 70 chemicals, and found 48.

There were three groups of chemicals, though, that really stood out. For certain fire retardant chemicals, stain and grease resistant chemicals, and plastic chemicals called phthalates, dogs and cats had higher rates than 80-100% of all the humans that have been tested. These classes of chemicals have been associated with cancer, reproductive and developmental risks, birth defects and thyroid problems. Not surprisingly, dogs have much higher rates than humans of several kinds of cancer (including skin cancer, bone cancer, breast tumors and leukemia), and hyperthyroidism is a leading cause of illness in older cats. Some people say it’s genetic changes causing those problems, but animals just don’t evolve quickly enough to account for the rise in illness we’ve seen. Scientists think exposure to toxic chemicals may be to blame.

[lucknow]

Definately food for thought. I keep birds and know we have to be very careful what they inhale particularly but I guess I got quite blase on other common chemicals I expose my animals to.