Pesticide Exposure to Dogs and Their Owners Living in the City of Boulder

Gonzalez-Beltran, Dulce Flor

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Pesticide Exposure to Dogs and Their Owners Living in the City of Boulder Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/j3860859r

Abstract

Pesticides are used widely in agriculture and urban settings to mitigate the impact of pests and unwanted weeds. The application of pesticides has the potential to drift landing on nontargeted areas such as other lawns, people, and pets. This exposure can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Using passive monitoring devices like the Fresh Air sampler wristband and tag, 39 City of Boulder residents and their dogs participated in a seven-day study where they were instructed to record their daily dog walks with the phone application STRAVA, record daily activities, and take a one-time survey about home characteristics and habits. It was hypothesized that dogs were exposed to hazardous pesticides and their human owners were exposed to the same pesticides at similar quantities. It was also hypothesized that the relationship between exposure concentration and home habits, daily dog walk locations, and time spent outdoors during the study were also explored with spearmen's rank correlation coefficients test and generalized linear models. Piperonyl butoxide exposure concentrations were found to be correlated in both human and dog. In addition to spending more time outdoors, piperonyl butoxide exposure concentration in dogs and humans was increased when they walked their daily dog walk in the southern region of the City of Boulder. In this study, six out of eight pesticides that could be calculated with conservative assumption for cancer risk factor resulted in a cancer risk factor above the EPA acceptable 10-6. DDD was detected in one human-dog pair participants and DDT was detected in five human and five dog pairs above the limit of detection.

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