Free Zoobiquity by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz Page A

sand and silt as well as in their food.
    The contaminants were linked to the whale cancers and the die-off. Significantly, another group of animals living around the St. Lawrence Estuary at the same time shared the whales’ unusual cancer patterns: humans.
    When animals die in clusters, we’re wise to pay attention. Emerging infectious diseases like SARS and avian influenza often show up first in animals. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals may manifest in animals before they affect human fertility.Animals even forewarn us of biological attacks or chemical leaks; when anthrax escaped from a Soviet military facility in 1979, for example, the first to die were nearby livestock.
    Sometimes the animal warnings point to cancer.Although PCB production and DDT use have been banned in the United States for more than thirty years, researchers now suspect that the toxins may be contributing to a significant increase in the outbreak of sea lion cancers off California. For thirty years, starting in the 1940s, manufacturing companies used this part of the Pacific to dump millions of pounds of thosechemicals. Although the Environmental Protection Agency instituted a clean-up in 2000, there’s one reservoir that’s hard to get at: the animals’ own bodies. Through gestation and lactation, up to 90 percent of a mother’s contaminant load can be “dumped” into her first-born pup. Veterinary oncologists believe that either repeated “hits” of the toxins are causing the animals’ cells to mutate or they’re suppressing the animals’ immune systems so much that the herpes virus that causes the cancer has a better chance to replicate. If that’s true, these animal cancers could be warnings to humans living in areas polluted by similar chemicals that the dangers of toxins might go beyond direct exposure. They may be passed down through generations (meaning their presence can be felt long after a toxic site is cleaned up) and/or have secondary effects on the immune system.
    Industrial pollutants are causing animals to suffer and die. Responsibility for these animal illnesses lies squarely with our species. Indeed, if animals could lawyer up, we humans would probably find ourselves as the defendants in any number of class-action lawsuits. Beluga whales shouldn’t have to die terrible deaths from cancer because we allow our industries to foul the waters where they eat and breed.
    So with the proviso that in an ideal world we wouldn’t give animals cancer for the convenience and greed of certain industries (many of which we all partake in, whether petroleum or plastic or pesticides), the sad fact that animals get cancer can be helpful to humans if we think of them as sentinels. And one way to honor their sacrifice is to do something about it. Not pretend it doesn’t affect us. As governments, as societies, as a species, we need to act when we see disease emerging in clusters of animals—to save them and to save ourselves.
    As humans, we don’t live in the waters of the St. Lawrence Estuary or the Pacific kelp beds off California. We live in condo complexes and single-family homes, studio apartments, farmhouses, and trailers. And in all of those places, who lives with us? Dogs.
    Hundreds of millions of dogs around the world coexist with us as pets. At the simplest, most expedient level, this means they can serve as in-house sentinels to warn about or confirm cancer risks.One study of nose and sinus cancers in dogs, for example, found a strong correlationwith the use of indoor coal or kerosene heaters. The longer the dog’s nose, the greater its chance of getting this cancer, possibly because of a greater exposed nasal surface area.Bladder cancer and lymphoma, both linked to pesticides, have been reported in pet dogs, with a higher risk for bladder cancer found in female dogs that were obese.And military dogs who served in Vietnam had higher-than-usual rates of testicular cancer, possibly because of their exposure to a variety of