Pets More Toxic Than Humans
by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC
Our pets face huge challenges in a toxic world. While we try to drink filtered water and eat organic food, our pets are most often subjected to large amounts of toxins on a daily basis, stressing their immune systems, organs and overall health. Recently reported on Grist, blood and urine samples of cats and dogs showed higher contamination than humans, with evidence of at least 48 chemicals, including pesticides, mercury, fire retardant and those from plastics.
Many toys made with chemicals pose a surprising threat to your pets health, especially to dogs, who chew vigorously and extensively on plastics toys that release toxins into their systems. Although playing fetch with tennis balls and frisbee is fun exercise for your faithful companion, don’t allow prolonged chewing on these items. Better yet, skip the plastics all together and supply your pet with natural or naturally-made toys. Check out GreatGreenPet.com.
While your at it, stay clear of bedding made with petroleum-based or other toxic materials - splurge on the good stuff made from organic fabrics. You’ll be protecting fido and you while supporting a shift to a safer textile industry.
My herding dogs run a lot and end up drinking from creeks and puddles to rehydrate when we’re hiking. Bringing water along on hot days is helpful, but here’s a tip that really works. Before we go out, I offer a big bowl of “baited” water - with organic raw milk or broth in it. My dogs get pre-hydrated this way and are not as likely to indulge in street puddles or creeks.
Organic and higher quality foods are becoming more readily available and hopefully will become less expensive as demands increase.There’s a lot of information available online since the recent recall of contaminated pet foods that caused the death of many pets. Find the food that fits your needs as well as your dogs. I urge a diet of as much human-grade raw food as manageable - I also use high quality products from Halo, Innova and Solid Gold.
They are worth it.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hey! Thanks for the info about toxins and animals. I never thought about my dogs toys that way. Greatgreenpet is the perfect website to help my dogs out! I was browsing through a bunch of green websites and blogs and I came across yours and found it very interesting. There are a bunch of others I like too, like the daily green, ecorazzi and earthlab.com. I especially like EarthLab.com’s carbon calculator (http://www.earthlab.com/signupprofile/). I find it really easy to use (it doesn’t make me feel guilty after I take it). Are there any others you would recommend? Can you drop me a link to your favorites (let me know if they are the same as mine).
May 15th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thanks to you for dropping by, Adrian. There are many green-motivated bloggers sharing information and inspiration out there. Check out my blog roll on the home page!
Thanks again,
Tao