Abstract
Non-human animals serve as sentinels for numerous issues affecting humans, including exposure to toxic heavy metals like lead. Lead plays a role in perpetuating cycles of poverty in low-income communities due to the inequitable distributions of indoor health risks from lower-quality housing and outdoor health risks from industry and polluters, compounded by inequitable distributions of heath care and education. In this pilot study, we explore the potential for studying lead in low-income populations by partnering with nonprofit veterinary outreach programs. We investigate the lead concentration in fur samples of 85 domestic cats (Felis catus) presented to a high-volume spay/neuter clinic and report a mean of 0.723 μg of lead per gram of fur. This study reveals new information about lead exposure in cats in the USA, including that females had greater lead exposure than males, lead exposure increased with increasing amount of access to the outdoors, and lead exposure increased in cats with decreased body condition. We propose that pet, feral, and free-roaming cats presented to high-volume spay/neuter clinics could serve as a source of data about lead exposure in disadvantaged communities where these clinics already operate. Such a non-invasive surveillance system using inert, unobtrusively obtained samples could be deployed to detect highly exposed cats, prompting to follow up contact to a cat’s caretakers to recommend seeking lead testing for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information (see S1_aelurocatleaddata.csv).
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14 October 2021
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References
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Acknowledgements
This study was conducted as a capstone for a Graduate Certificate in One Health offered by Peter Rabinowitz’s Center for One Health Research at the University of Washington. Thank you to Vickie Ramirez as the program administrator; Shar Samy and staff for allowing to use their lab for cleaning samples; Steven McGeehan, Brian Hart, and technicians at the University of Idaho Analytical Sciences Laboratory for analyzing our samples; and Rad Cunningham and Lauren A. Freelander at the Washington State Department of Health for answering questions about lead in our region. Thank you to Dr. Jennifer Buchanan and the Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project for allowing collection of fur samples and to cat caretakers whose cats were included in the study. Lastly, thank you to the cats themselves for unknowingly contributing to this study.
Funding
This study received no external funding and was funded by author SA.
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Contributions
SA conceived and designed the study, collected samples, paid for lead testing of samples, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. TJK supervised the study and contributed to the manuscript.
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Ethics approval and consent to participate
Incidental sample collection did not require an IACUC protocol application for animal use by the University of Washington. Data about cats provided by their caretakers was covered by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board as STUDY00005055.
Consent for publication
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Aeluro, S., Kavanagh, T.J. Domestic cats as environmental lead sentinels in low-income populations: a One Health pilot study sampling the fur of animals presented to a high-volume spay/neuter clinic. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 57925–57938 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14769-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14769-7