Laboratory studies of ingredients in seven popular flea and tick control products reveal adverse health effects in all animals tested. The effects of these well-known and aggressively marketed products range from seizures, body tremors, and shortness of breath to thyroid cancer, brain damage, and liver and lung tumors. However, TV commercials featuring trustworthy-seeming veterinarians only show the bright side of these products.
What flea and tick pesticide are you using on your dog and/or cat? If your favorite treatment contains the active ingredient Fipronil, Imidacloprid, Metoprene, Permethrin, Pyriproxyfen or the inert ingredient Butyldydroxytoluene, Butylhydroxanisol, Carbitol, Ethanol or Polyvinylpyrrlidone, you should also know the not so happy side of these products.
If you think your vet or local pet store would never sell you such a sinister poison, think again.
Advantage (Bayer Corporation), Adams Spot-On Flea and Tick Control (Farnam Pet Products), BioSpot Flea and Tick Control (Farnam Pet Products), Defend EXspot Treatment (Schering-Plough Animal Health), Frontline Top Spot ( Merial Limited), Frontline Plus (Merial Limited), and Zodiac FleaTrol Spot On (Wellmark International) – all contain one or more of the active or inert ingredients listed above.
The toxicology and morbidity findings for these pesticide products were compiled over a decade of laboratory testing by the United States Environmental Protection Agency; Occupational Safety and Health Administration, US Department of Labor; Toxicology Extension Network; Journal of Pesticide Reform; Pesticide Action Network North America and other sources, with additional information provided by Material Safety Data Sheets.
Most of the testing was done for the benefit of manufacturers of new products to qualify for EPA registration. Scientists overdose laboratory animals to determine how much of the product will kill 50% of the test population. The information is then extrapolated and assumptions are made that can be applied to domestic animals and humans.
Based on laboratory tests, fipronil (Frontline Top Spot and Frontline Plus) is a neurotoxin and a suspected human carcinogen. Fipronil can cause liver toxicity, thyroid cancer, kidney damage, increased cholesterol, incoordination, shortness of breath, miscarriages, and delayed growth in children.
Laboratory tests of Imidacloprid (Advantage) in mice, dogs, and rats show that this insecticide is neurotoxic to laboratory animals, and also causes failure of coordination, labored breathing, thyroid lesions, low birth weight, and increase in birth defects.
The broad-spectrum synthetic pyrethroid insecticide Permethrin (Adams Spot-on Flea & Tick Control; BioSpot Flea & Tick Control; and Defend EXspot Treatment) shows evidence of being an endocrine disruptor and the cause of lung cancer and liver tumors in laboratory animals .
Methoprene and pyriproxyfen (Zodiac FleaTrol Spot On; and BioSpot Flea & Tick Control) are known insect growth regulators (IGRs), which restrict the growth of fleas to the juvenile stage where reproduction is not possible. Laboratory tests reveal that methoprene causes liver enlargement and kidney degeneration.
Unfortunately, few people actually read the EPA test results. Fewer still want to know about the many laboratory test subjects (unwanted dogs and cats) killed during and after studies to determine damage to specific organ systems. But it only takes a few straight-thinking people to bring about change. Are you ready to stop this madness? There are effective alternatives, as you know.
Today there are all-natural flea and tick remedies, completely harmless to children, pets and the environment, made from pure botanical essential oils. Some natural products work quite well, some don’t, and some work much better than toxic products!
The mode of action, the way these natural remedies kill fleas and ticks, is to disrupt the insect’s ability to function by blocking a substance called octopamine. In nature, some plants have developed a natural defense against insects. These “octopamine blockers” in plants are extracted as oils and used as active ingredients. Octopamine is to an insect what adrenaline is to a human. When the system crashes, the bug quickly dies. Without messing up without problems. No one gets hurt except the bug.
Start today to stop supporting ruthless lab testing of innocent animals, insidious cover-up and rush-to-market by big business, and the unintended harm we may be doing to our children, our pets, and our planet.
