TOXICS INFORMATION PROJECT (TIP)
P.O. Box 40572, Providence, RI 02906
Tel. 401-351-9193, E-Mail: TIP@toxicsinfo.org
Website: www.toxicsinfo.org
(Lighting the Way to Less Toxic
Living)
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Poisons on Pets
Health Hazards from Flea and Tick Products
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/pets/execsum.asp
This November 2000 NRDC report highlights the potential health hazards
to humans and pets from flea collars and other flea and tick control
products. The report recommends that
the EPA ban the use of an entire class of these products -- those using
organophosphates. It also offers recommendations for pet owners on combating
fleas and ticks with a variety of simple non-chemical steps and/or by applying
safer products, including insect growth regulators. The executive summary of the report follows.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Each year,
Americans purchase and apply to their pets a vast array of toxic chemicals
intended to kill fleas and ticks. These
products are designed to poison insects, and they usually do just that. But they can also poison pets and the people
who handle them. Moreover, when these
products are combined in the home, as they often are, with other toxic chemical
products in common use -- pesticides, herbicides, and other products -- they
can pose a serious health risk, especially to children.
Adults are
at risk from these flea and tick products as well -- pet workers who apply
pesticides to animals on a daily basis, for example. But it is children who are
most vulnerable. Because children’s bodies are still developing, they can be
more sensitive to the effects of toxic chemicals than adults. Studies with
laboratory animals have raised concerns among scientists that children exposed
to certain of the pesticides in pet products -- even at levels believed to be
safe for adults -- face much higher risks, not only for acute poisoning, but
also for longer-term problems with brain function and other serious
disease. Moreover, children’s behavior
often makes them more vulnerable than adults. In particular, toddlers’
hand-to-mouth tendencies make it easy for toxics to be ingested -- and not just
by children who pet the family dog and then put their hands in their mouths.
Children spend their time where the toxics from pet products tend to accumulate
-- crawling on rugs, playing with pet toys, handling accumulations of household
dust, and more.
Many and
perhaps most Americans believe that commercially available pesticides, such as
those found in pet products, are tightly regulated by the government. In fact,
they are not. Not until the passage of
a 1996 law focused on pesticides in food did the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) begin examining the risks from pesticides in pet products in
earnest. To this day, the EPA allows
the manufacture and sale of pet products containing hazardous insecticides with
little or no demonstration that a child’s exposure to these ingredients would
be safe. Just because these products
are on store shelves does not mean they have been tested or can be presumed
safe.
Of course,
as bad as these products may be for pet owners and caregivers, they often are
worse for the pets themselves. Based on
the very limited data available, it appears that hundreds and probably
thousands of pets have been injured or killed through exposure to pet products
containing pesticides. As with small children, pets cannot report when they’re
being poisoned at low doses.
Healthier
alternatives to these pesticides are readily available. Easy physical measures like frequent bathing
and combing of pets can make the use of pesticides unnecessary. Pet products containing non-pesticide growth
regulators also can stop fleas from reproducing successfully. In addition, newer insecticides, sprayed or
spotted onto pets, have been developed that are effective against fleas and
ticks without being toxic to the human nervous system. The safety and effectiveness of these
alternatives makes the continued use of older, more toxic pet products
tragically unnecessary.
Pet
Pesticides at Work
Approximately
90 percent of American households use pesticides. According to one study, 80 percent of families surveyed have used
pesticides at home even when a woman in the household was pregnant, and 70
percent have used them during a child’s first six months of life. Half of the surveyed families reported using
insecticides to control fleas and ticks on pets. More than a billion dollars a year are spent on flea and tick
products. Unfortunately, the wide use
of these products is no indication that they are safe. Quite the contrary, the pesticides they
introduce into the home include chemicals that are hazardous to the human brain
and nervous system, chemicals that may disrupt the human hormone (endocrine)
system, and pesticides suspected of causing cancer.
Flea
control products now on the market include seven specific "organophosphate
insecticides" (OPs). OPs work by blocking the breakdown of the body’s
messenger chemical, acetylcholine, thereby interfering with the transmission of
nerve signals in the brains and nervous systems of insects, pets and humans
alike. In the presence of OPs, acetylcholine builds up in the body. The resulting interference with nerve
transmissions is of such a magnitude that it actually kills insects. In overdoses, OPs can also kill people and
pets. But even with normal use of flea-control products containing OPs, pets
and children may be in danger. The seven OPs are
chlorpyrifos, dichlorvos, phosmet, naled, tetrachlorvinphos, diazinon and
malathion. They are the active
ingredients in dozens of pet products.
A comprehensive list of products appears in Table 1. It includes major
pet pesticide brands, such as Alco, Americare, Beaphar, Double Duty, Ford’s,
Freedom Five, Happy Jack, Hartz, Hopkins, Kill-Ko, Protection, Rabon,
Riverdale, Sergeant, Unicorn, Vet-Kem, Victory and Zema.
Organophosphate
chemicals are also used on foods and in other common household products designed
to kill non-pet-borne insects. For
families exposed to these toxic chemicals, however, the route into the home and
the specifics of how the chemicals work are less relevant than the plain fact
that they pose a health threat. From a
health standpoint, a person’s combined exposure to one of these OPs,
irrespective of its individual uses, is what is important. Further, because the various OPs all
function by attacking the same chemical in the body, acetylcholine, exposure to
a variety of OPs could have a combined impact.
The EPA's
Role
Actual
exposure of children and adults to OPs in pet products has not been adequately
measured, and such studies have not been required of manufacturers seeking to
put new pet pesticide products on the market. Indeed, until passage of the 1996
Food Quality Protection Act, EPA typically assumed there were no risks from
these products, often with little or no scientific basis. In other words, EPA has allowed for decades
the manufacture and sale of products containing pet pesticides without
demonstration that a child’s exposure to the products would be safe. The 1996 law requires something new of EPA:
that it estimate the accumulated effect on people of particular
pesticides used on food products, accounting not just for exposure from foods,
but from all sources. Since OPs used in pet products also are used on food
crops, the law applies to these pesticides.
Another provision of the law requires EPA to estimate the cumulative effect
on a person from exposure to all pesticides and other chemicals that function
in the same way. Because each OP
functions by attacking the same chemical messenger in the body, home exposure
to a variety of different OPs should be expected to have a cumulative health
impact as well. The new law directs EPA
to account for this cumulative effect in its risk assessments.
To date,
EPA’s compliance with the Food Quality Protection Act’s provisions has been
incomplete. Its risk assessments have been handicapped by flawed and
inconsistent assumptions that have served to understate the risk from pet
products. For example, in calculating
risks of exposure to one chemical, EPA assumes that adults never hug
their dog, and in a number of instances, EPA makes a variety of unrealistic
assumptions about how long children spend in contact with their pets. Moreover, four years after the enactment of
the Act, EPA has yet to comply with the requirement that the Agency account for
the cumulative impact of multiple OPs or of other chemicals that function in the
same way. Here again, the result is risk assessments that understate the health
hazards of exposure to the toxics in pet products. Finally, still today, EPA has never received adequate toxicity
tests for these pesticide products long on the market. Of the seven chemicals that are the focus of
this report, only one -- chlorpyrifos -- has been fully tested for its impact
on a child’s brain and nervous system.
And, when the nervous-system testing for chlorpyrifos was recently
completed, the results were so disturbing that the manufacturer itself took
virtually all indoor uses of the chemical off the market.
Even with
those important failings in EPA’s methodology, the Agency’s formal risk
assessments for the seven OPs found both in pet and other products should alarm
pet owners and parents: EPA now calculates that a child’s exposure to
individual OPs in pet products on the day of treatment alone can exceed safe
levels by up to 500 times -- 50,000 percent.
Exposures to children calculated over a longer period of time can
exceed safe levels to an even greater degree.
Were EPA to calculate the risks from these products using sound
assumptions about how exposure to humans occurs in the real world, and/or were
it to comply with the legal requirement that it calculate the cumulative effect
of these OPs and of products that function similarly, EPA estimates of the
risks from these products would be bleaker still.
The
Natural Resources Defense Council is the first to put the individual risk
assessments for pesticides from pet products side by side, highlighting the
overall risks to children. EPA
continues to look at these OP risks only one chemical at a time. The Agency has simply never gotten around to
estimating the cumulative risks children face from the myriad uses of all the
different OPs to which they are exposed.
Once EPA does so, the cumulative risks are sure to exceed EPA’s safe
levels to a far greater degree.
The Risks
Though
EPA’s assessments of the risks from OPs in pet products are new, EPA has long
identified OPs generally as being among the pesticides posing the highest risks
to human health. Workers exposed to
these chemicals, for example, have experienced visual problems, slowed
thinking, and memory deficits. In truth, however, the principal risk for humans
is likely to the brain and nervous system of young children and fetuses,
because their systems are still developing when they are exposed to OPs. The risks come in two forms: risks from
poisoning, and risks from long-term effects on the brain and nervous system.
- Children’s Risk of Acute Poisoning. OPs are considered the most dangerous
pesticides for acute poisoning, particularly for children younger than
six. Among incidents reported to
poison control centers, children exposed to OPs were three times more
likely to be hospitalized, five times more likely to be admitted to a
critical care unit, and four times more likely to die, suffer life
threatening illness, or develop a permanent disability, than were children
who had been exposed to other types of pesticides.
- Children’s Long-term Health Effects. A child’s developing brain and nervous
system are particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of OPs because
these systems are not fully developed at birth and must continue to form
during early childhood. Brain
development requires certain cells to first grow, then migrate within the
brain, and then connect with one another.
Chemicals such as OPs can interrupt and have irreversible effects
on this development. Studies have
also shown that children exposed to OPs may face increased risks for such
later-in-life problems as cancer and Parkinson’s disease. A recent
epidemiological study, for example, showed that people with any history of
in-home exposure to insecticides, like OPs, can more than double the risk
of Parkinson’s later in life. In
addition, four OPs used in pet products increase cancers in laboratory
animals, and therefore may cause cancer in humans. One epidemiological study that looked,
among other things, at pregnant women who had been exposed to flea and
tick products, found that their children were 250 percent more likely than
those in a control group to be diagnosed with brain cancer before their
fifth birthday.
Of course, it is not only children
who are at risk. Pets and pet workers
are vulnerable as well.
- Pet Poisonings. In recent years, hundreds, if not
thousands, of pets have been poisoned by pesticide products specifically
designed for use on pets. Products
containing OPs are among the worst culprits. EPA finds that these pet
products are frequently misused and that such misuse should be anticipated
by manufacturers. Cats are
particularly vulnerable, since they often lack key enzymes for
metabolizing or detoxifying OPs.
As with children, a cat’s small size and unique behavior -- in this
case, grooming -- work against them as well, making them particularly
vulnerable to OP poisoning.
- Pet Worker Poisonings. Over a recent four-period, at least 26
adults working with pesticide pet dips were poisoned. Nearly half of these cases involved the
OP, phosmet. Moreover, a survey of
nearly 700 adults who worked with flea control products found that these
workers were two-and-a-half times more likely to have health problems than
workers not exposed to such products.
The complaints included statistically significant increases in blurred vision,
skin flushing and asthma.
Although
each of the OPs we looked at has unsafe pet uses, the properties of these
products vary, and so they pose somewhat different threats to the people
exposed to them. Some examples:
·
Pets
"dipped" with phosmet.
Toddlers who pet a large dog the day of its treatment and then put their
fingers in their mouths will receive more than 500 times the safe level of this
chemical, according to EPA estimates.
·
Flea
collars containing dichlorvos (DDVP). EPA’s preliminary estimates are that
toddlers exposed to pets wearing flea collars containing dichlorvos would be
exposed to 21 times the safe level just from inhalation of the insecticide
emitted from the collar. Adults exposed
to the same product would experience exposures ten times greater than safe
levels.
·
Flea
collars containing naled. EPA found no uses of naled flea collars that are safe
for children ages eight and under.
Toddlers’ exposures were calculated to be as much as ten times more than
EPA’s safe level.
·
Flea
collars containing chlorpyrifos. EPA
estimates that a toddler exposed to a dog wearing these collars could get more
than seven times the level EPA considers to be safe merely from hugging or
petting their dog.
·
Pets
sprayed or dusted with tetrachlorvinphos.
EPA finds that toddlers exposed to medium- or large-sized dogs that have
been sprayed or dusted with tetrachlorvinphos products could face exposures
nearly twice as high as EPA’s safe level.
·
Dipping
or powdering pets with tetrachlorvinphos.
EPA determines that powdering or dipping a single pet with
tetrachlorvinphos just twice a year would, over the course of a lifetime, pose
a risk of cancer to the person dipping the pet nearly six to seven times higher
than acceptable EPA levels. Dipping or
powdering multiple pets, or doing so more frequently, would raise cancer risks
even higher.
Safer
Alternatives
The
continued exposure of children, pets and animal workers to OPs contained in pet
products is all the more distressing because safer alternatives are readily
avail-able. Easy physical measures
alone, like frequent washing and combing of the pet and vacuuming carpets and
furniture, can bring mild flea infestations under control. Alternatives include insect growth
regulators, or IGRs, which are not pesticides, but rather chemicals that arrest
the growth and development of young fleas.
These include methoprene, fenoxycarb and pyriproxyfen and the popular
lufenuron (Program®). Alternatives also
include newer pesticide products sprayed or spotted onto pets, such as fipronil
(Frontline®) or imidacloprid (Advantage®).
Particularly when used in combination with physical measures, the safety
and effectiveness of these newer chemical products makes the continued use of
pet products containing OPs -- and their attendant risks for humans and pets
alike -- rash and unnecessary.
Recommendations
The
threats posed to humans and pets by OPs in pet pesticides are intolerable. The
Natural Resources Defense Council recommends the following:
·
Pet
owners should begin using safer products on their pets, avoiding OP-based pet
products. Safer products are best combined with such simple physical measures
as brushing pets regularly with a flea comb while inspecting for fleas, and
mowing frequently in areas where pets spend the most time outdoors.
·
Pregnant
women and families with children should cease using OP-based products
immediately.
·
Children
should never apply flea shampoos, dusts, dips, etc. containing OPs to their
pets. EPA has overlooked and
underestimated the particular risks to children when evaluating the safety of
these products for home use.
·
Retailers
should remove OP products from their shelves and seek to educate customers
about the merits of safer alternatives.
·
EPA
should move immediately to ban the use of pet pesticides containing OPs.
·
EPA
should consider also banning pet products that contain carbamates -- a class of
insecticides closely related to OPs, and sharing with OPs the same basic biological
mechanism of harm. Likewise, homeowners
and retailers should avoid the purchase and sale of these carbamate-containing
products.
·
EPA
should take steps to better inform veterinarians, pet owners and the general
public about safer alternatives for the control of fleas and ticks on pets.
For most
pet owners, the family dog or cat is a beloved member of the family. Unfortunately, products often used to
protect pets from fleas and ticks carry serious health hazards -- not just for
the pets, but for the children who play with them, care for them, and love
them. Safer alternatives are available
-- alternatives that will effectively protect pets from insects without
introducing intolerable health hazards into the home. Consumers, manufacturers,
veterinarians, retailers and the government all have an important role to play
in eliminating these risky pet products and bringing safer alternatives into
common use.