Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
corrosive and toxic hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide. More than a few times, I came home
with heart palpitations from having trained in dusty tobacco warehouses and factories, won-
dering how I'd managed smoking on and off for nearly twenty years before finally quitting,
and whether Solo would get lung cancer.
My cure-all for toxic exposure is soap and water: first Solo, then me, as soon as we get
home. Solo, who has just spent his time throwing himself with delight into muck-and-algae-
filled swamps, will tuck his tail and lay his ears back tight against his head, trying to seal them
against a single drop of clean water.
Is Solo more prone to cancer or respiratory illnesses or stray bacteria than a standard pet
dog? It's hard to know. Few studies are out there. Working dogs tend to be in good phys-
ical condition and less obese than pet dogs. It may go beyond that, though. Cynthia Otto,
founder of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, studied the dogs deployed during 9/11 and
came away encouraged. She told Terry Gross of
Fresh Air:
“[T]hese dogs seem to live longer
and healthier lives than your average dog that we see in our hospital at the University of
Pennsylvania. So I have a theory that I would love to explore as well. If the physical activity
and the fitness and the mental stimulation and just the joy of life that these dogs have, be-
cause they're doing something so great and have such a great bond with their handlers, if that
doesn't enhance not only the quality of life but their longevity.”
Otto is not the only researcher to look at the dogs of 9/11, although she concentrated on
the volunteer search-and-rescue dogs.
Another small study of the twenty-seven New York City police and fire department dogs
who worked at the 9/11 sites showed similar results. In the five years after those dogs were
deployed, their health problems were “minor and infrequent.” The dogs were exposed to air
laden with the dust of cement, glass, fiberglass, asbestos, lead, jet fuel, dioxins. Those dogs
worked even longer hours than the search-and-rescue dogs who arrived a bit later to the site:
thirty-seven weeks without masks, without hazard suits. They were getting toxins through
every pore. None of the dogs showed long-term respiratory problems—the diseases that af-
fected the human rescue workers at a higher rate.
The average dog in our industrialized nation isn't doing so well. One 2008 study of pet
dogs showed they were contaminated with thirty-five chemicals, including eleven carcino-
gens and twenty-four neurotoxins. Happily, one can't leap from chemical contamination to
disease, but skin cancer, bone cancer, and leukemia are much more common in dogs than in
people. It is estimated that almost 50 percent of all dogs over the age of ten will develop can-
cer and approximately 20 to 25 percent will die from it. In the late 1930s, a researcher showed
that chemical compounds used in dyes caused bladder cancer in dogs. In the mid-1950s,
other researchers showed that another industrial chemical caused bladder cancer in dogs. By
