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DOG lovers beware. Your friendly pet may bring back more than a mouldy old
bone when he bounds in from the garden. His paws could be dripping with
poisons.

Researchers at the US Environmental Protection Agency wanted to know if pet
dogs pick up pesticides from newly treated lawns and carry them in on their
coats and paws. Preliminary results suggest that pesticide residues on dogs can
be a hundred times higher than typical background levels.

鈥淧eople apply these pesticides all the time. I wanted to find out how much is
actually being tracked in by the dog,鈥� says Marsha Morgan, a researcher at the
EPA鈥檚 National Exposure Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, North
Carolina.

Morgan studied a family of four people and their dog just after their garden
was treated with diazinon, a common organophosphate insecticide. For the next
three weeks she took samples from the air and carpet in the house, as well as
from the paws and fur of the dog.

Results showed diazinon levels inside were sometimes 50 times higher than
background levels. And the dog is the prime suspect, because pesticide residues
on its paws were between 55 and 250 times higher than background levels.

As yet, it鈥檚 not clear if these residues are a health risk, and Morgan
cautions against interpreting too much from this small, initial study. She is
planning more detailed studies of nine other homes next year.

Morgan says her techniques could be used to measure exposure to other
pesticides in the home.