Summer is peak season for outdoor recreation, and in Colorado, that often means bringing dogs along for the adventure. But with numerous wildfires impacting the state’s air quality, you might be wondering if itap safe to let your four-legged friends hang out in nature or even in your backyard.
Sheryl Magzamen, an epidemiologist and professor of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University, is also curious about how, if at all, poor air quality affects dogs. Thatap why she is helping lead a study intended to find out .
“There’s this huge gap in understanding what this means for animal health,” Magzamen said. “A lot of our recommendations right now are based on human health recommendations, and part of our question is, does that make sense given that dogs usually spend more time outside than people do? And their lives aren’t as long, so do we see that health effects have more meaning because their lifetimes are shorter?”
Leveraging the Denver-based Morris Animal Foundation’s , Magzamen and her co-researchers Craig Webb, Danni Scott and Colleen Duncan will evaluate whether smoke and specifically the chemical PM2.5 lead to higher rates of cancer in the breed or ultimately shorten their lives by causing other diseases.
The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, started in 2012, seeks to identify nutritional, environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs. It has enrolled more than 3,000 dogs located across the U.S., Magzamen said, which should give researchers a better understanding if the type of smoke also plays a role in canine illness.
Colorado dogs, for example, are more likely to be exposed to smoke from forest fires, whereas dogs in the southeastern U.S. are more prone to exposure from grassland fires and other types of prescribed burns, Magzeman said.
“Depending on what burns and how hot it burns and what other things burn around it changes the chemical composition of that smoke,” she said. “We are really trying to understand what this means not only for us, butfor our canine companions as well.”
Results from her study won’t be published until at least next year. Until then, Magzamen said owners can use themselves as a barometer for their dog’s safety in smoky conditions. Humans and canines have many of the same organs in their cardiovascular and respiratory systems, she said, so “if you don’t feel good, you can assume your dog might not feel good either.”
On days when the air quality index is “unhealthy” for people to breathe (an AQI between 151 and 200), Magzamen advised limiting your dog’s activity and exercise. High-intensity activity, like runs or big hikes, should also be reduced when the air quality is less than ideal, she said. Senior dogs could be considered among “sensitive groups,” like children and individuals with lung diseases, which are at risk when the air quality index hits 100 or more, she added.
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Air pollution has been linked to in humans, including increasing the risk of premature birth, causing or worsening lung and heart disease, and shortening lives, according to the American Lung Association.
Magzamen and her co-researchers hope to understand if AQI readings are transferable to dogs or if there should be separate guidance for animals and individual breeds, such as French bulldogs and pugs that have shorter snouts and more difficulty breathing. As a dog lover, she also hopes her work can help other canine-loving families lead happy, long lives. Her golden good boy, Comet, recently died from cancer at 6 years old.
“It definitely gives me pause to think about what this means as Comet was out and about on his two walks a day. When he was healthy and doing well, these are days that we know smoke was in the air. I'm not saying that itap causal, but it also makes me think, did this potentially have impacts on his diagnosis and ultimately his death?” she said.
