Indoor Air Quality and Your Pet

It's really important to kind of drive that home. A lot of people don't realize are animals. And one of the slides you're talking about just how much more sensitive they are, how much more receptors they have, and how much more of an impact that might make. You know, seven and a half million breaths per year is what we take on average. I wonder, I wonder what that number is for pets. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the first annual Change the Air Summit. I'm your host here, Michael Rubino. And today I have a very special guest. Judy Morgan is a certified veterinary acupuncturist, chiropractic and food therapist. After 36 years, Dr. Morgan retired from clinical practice in 2020. She now focuses on empowering pet parents to provide longer, healthier lives for their pets through educational courses and seminars, blogs and speaking engagements. Her e commerce site, Naturally Healthy Pets, provides high quality products to enrich the lives of animals. She's a best selling author of four books and has appeared on cnn, pbs, abc, cbs, NBC, and hundreds of radio stations and podcasts. Her goal is to change the lives of over 10 million pets by teaching pet owners worldwide how to minimize the use of chemicals, vaccinations, and poor quality processed food while using natural healing therapies. Dr. Judy Morgan, welcome and thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for the invitation. Anytime I can reach more pet parents to keep pets healthy, I am thrilled.

And of course, this has change the air. And our goal is obviously to change the air for millions of people. Just like your mission here is to change for over 10 million pets. Obviously air quality not only impacts the occupants inside, but also pets. And so it's really important to kind of COVID that. So I'll let you take it away and present this amazing presentation that you have prepared for us today.

No problem. Thank you so much. All right, so changing the air in your home is definitely going to benefit your pets. Pets live a much shorter lifespan than we do, so because of that, they develop health problems from exposure to pollutants much more rapidly than we do. There's one study in dogs and cats that that found that the dogs and cats in the study were contaminated with 48 of the 70 chemicals that they tested. And 43 of those were at levels higher than found in people. And we'll talk about why that occurs as we get a little further in. But 20% of the chemicals were found in levels greater than five times the levels in people, and then another 20% were up to five times the levels found in people. So our Pets are concentrating these pollutants in their bodies and a lot more rapidly and at a lot higher level.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah. So, interestingly, olfactory receptors, which are the smell receptors, have been found in every tissue in the body of mammals, not just the nose. So we think that we smell with our nose, but actually all of our cells smell, and that's how they recognize each other and how they migrate from one area to another, how they multiply, and that's also how they kill off cells that are old or abnormal. And so the olfactory receptor genes form the largest gene families in mammalian genomes. So that includes us, dogs, cats, things with four legs. Humans have about 6 million scent receptors in our noses. Cats have 45 to 80 million, and dogs have 149 to 300 million scent receptors. That's why they're so good for tracking and finding lost people and, you know, working on sites where we're trying to find things. The part of the dog's brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is 40 times greater than ours. So they are going to be impacted by anything that's in the air. Any scents that are there, any chemicals in the air, they will be impacted so much more strongly than we will. And so you may not even notice that, that there is a bad odor or something in the air, but your pet swill. And you may notice them acting a little funny, even though you don't know what's going on. So I want to talk about VOCs, which are volatile organic compounds. They have high vapor pressure and low water solubility, which means that they basically go up into the air. Many of them are human made chemicals that we find in so many things that we use in our house. Paints, refrigerants, cleaning supplies, furnishings, carpet, flooring, cosmetics, perfumes, craft materials, permanent markers. So think about when you open that permanent marker or the right on your whiteboard and you get that smell. That's a volatile organic compound. The concentrations of the VOCs are much higher, 10 times higher indoors than they are outdoors, because we've got everything shut up. And so it doesn't disperse. The VOCs for people and for animals can cause headaches, nausea, irritation to the throat, nose and eyes. But worse than that, we can also get liver, kidney, and central nervous system damage. A lot of these have been linked to cancers in our pets and in humans and can even be strong enough to cause death. So we don't think about that, but particularly when we start talking about birds and cats, who are even more sensitive to some of these Chemicals, death is a very real potential problem. So our kitty cats are medically more sensitive to VOCs than dogs because they lack an essential enzyme in their liver to help process these compounds. So in our pets, we would expect to get respiratory symptoms, and we do coughing, wheezing, asthma, bronchitis, discharge from the nose. I had one client who was a heavy smoker, and so she would wear a lot of perfume to help cover the scent of the smoke. Unfortunately, her dog developed chronic sinusitis, chronic nasal discharge, thick, icky, disgusting nasal discharge, which eventually turned into a nasal cancer from that chronic irritation. So just something as simple, you know, I'm sure the smoke had something to do with it because we know that that's a cancer. But when we have these overpowering compounds that are being emitted and polluting the air. So this person's house, I would assume, also had these odors lingering in the air and on the furnishings. So our pets can also develop vomiting and diarrhea, changes in appetite. But again, even worse, we can have weakness, collapse, muscle tremors, seizures. They may hide, they may try to get out of the room. They may sit over an air vent. They may want to sit in front of the air condition or by an open window. They may ask to be outside more. And again, we can see cancer and death from these compounds. So the birds are different. We think about the canary in the coal mine, and the canaries were in the coal mine for a reason. It was the warning that, hey, the air quality is bad enough that things are going to start dying, like the bird, because their respiratory system is really sensitive to any synthetic and artificially scented particles, products, and the VOCs, and they can cause a fatal toxicity in birds. There are other things we're going to talk about that are more toxic to birds as well. So if you paint your house, you're painting inside rooms. The birds need to be kept out of that freshly painted room and in a well ventilated area for at least a week, and then ventilate that area really well before you bring the birds back in. And new flooring, new furniture, carpets, anything like that is also going to emit dangerous VOCs. That's something that we are becoming more aware of. So a lot of people are buying low VOC carpeting, low VOC flooring, furnishings. But that's not always possible for people. And you may not be aware of what's being emitted. But I know if I walk into a new house and it's got new carpet, you, you smell it's, you know, the new car Smell the new carpet smell. Those are VOCs that are being emitted.

That's really good information, because in this day and age, you know, we order everything and it's at our house in two days, and we get new stuff all the time. So it's important to know that.

Yes. And it's not aired out. I mean, what do you do? You get it. You immediately put it in and say, look at my new furniture. This is great.

Exactly.

So, and for people who have pets, a lot of times your pet may have some issues that cause odors, whether they're emitting gas, which they shouldn't be, or have a skin infection, an ear infection, something that has a bad odor to it. So what do we do? Or just your dog may smell, have a doggy odor. And so what do you do? You plug in air fresheners, or you use air freshening sprays, or you'll start diffusing something? Well, most of those fresheners or sprays emit more than 100 different chemicals into the air. 24 of those VOCs that have been found in these are classified as toxic or hazardous under US Law, yet they're still allowed. And interestingly, when they tested green products, the ones that are supposed to be safer, the emissions of the VOCs were really no different from the not so safe traditional products. So my recommendation is not to use any kind of plugins, air fresheners, deodorizer sprays, unless we're using something more natural. And we'll talk about those. Um, so then we looked at fire retardants. There are 19 different fire retardant chemicals that were found in blood and urine samples from dogs. They took a group of dogs, and then they also took tested people in the same housing and cats. The levels in the dogs were 17 times the average amount in people. And cats had levels of four of these chemicals, five times that found in humans. And the specific one, the PBDE, was 23 times higher in cats. So where do we find fire retardant chemicals? On furnishings, on bedding, mattresses, carpets, a lot of things that are used in our house. And where do our pets sleep? Where do the cats sleep? They sleep on the furniture. They sleep on the bed. They sleep on the floor. So they're getting a lot of this chemical absorbed into their bloodstream. They walk on it, they groom themselves. They lay on it, they groom themselves. And the chemicals disrupt the function of thyroid hormones and also pose risks for brain development in young animals. And so this would also occur with our children, who are growing and we're working on brain development. So our pets are actually, when we think about a one health situation, this is something where it's affecting them, it's affecting us. Nobody is let off the hook here. And so the fire retardants, like I said, are found in furniture and cars, carpets, but they're also found in the house dust, contaminated air, and in our food. Because if it's in the air and you have food sitting out on the counter, things settle from the air and it's in our. So we're eating it as well.

Yikes.

Yeah. Yeah. I loved doing the research for this because it was pretty eye opening. So essential oils. Now, I love really high quality pet safe essential oils from a medicinal standpoint. We actually use them a lot in holistic medicine. Unfair. Fortunately, there are a lot of either synthetic or poorly, very poorly sourced essential oils that are very, very dangerous for our pets. So generally we think of essential oils as being extracted from natural sources, but it's not. That's not always the case. And they can be pretty highly contaminated. Cats are more sensitive to essential oils than dogs. So a lot of times you'll see things online where it says, oh, you can't use any essential oils on cats. You can't, you know, diffuse anything with cats. That's not true. But cats are more sensitive because of that enzyme that they're missing in their liver. So anytime you want to use any kind of essential oils on your pets, make sure that they have been significantly tested for use on pets and that they are labeled specifically for use on dogs. And if you're using it around cats, it needs to be specifically labeled for safe use around cats. Candles are commonly infused with oils and are highly toxic if the concentration is high enough or the oils in them are known to be toxins. So with essential oils, anytime they're heated, so if you're diffusing them, if you have them in candles, they're going to be a higher concentration and more likely to cause toxicity. So we had, we went through a couple years ago, a lot of people were using potpourri. I think when we all started staying home during COVID we were like, oh, I want everything to smell good. And so we started seeing more and more and more cases of toxicity in cats where people would be diffusing something in their bedroom. The cat sleeps in the bedroom, and the next thing you know, the cat's in liver failure. So be very, very careful with any kind of essential oils. Anything that smells like if it's making a nice, pleasant smell in the house, there's a good chance that we're releasing VOCs that could be toxic to the animals. So with cleaning agents, we want to avoid ammonia based cleaners because they're going to release a ton of odor, which is very hard for our animals to deal with. And the same with bleach based cleaners, which are usually things more so for bathroom cleaning, mold and mildew removers, that sort of thing. And many of the carpet and floor cleaners contain toxic fumes that will contaminate your air. Carpet deodorizing powders, foams and dry shampoos. I find that people who have carpet and have pets want to use these all the time. And they are really toxic for our pets. I had one dog that they just kept having allergy issues with the dog. We designed special diets, we did allergy testing and what it came down to, because we weren't getting anywhere, they were using a carpet powder that was just making this dog crazy. As soon as they stopped using the carpet powder, clean the carpets with just a water based solution, water and enzyme based solution, the dog was cured. So if you have an itchy animal and you're using any of these things on your carpets, I would say stop. So we can get the asthmatic, coughing, wheezing symptoms from these, but we can also get itchy skin licking and interestingly, cleaning agents adhere to the carpet fibers and increases bacterial growth in your carpet. And so that degrades the air quality because now you're releasing bacteria into the air as well. So I personally have no carpet in my house. I think that carpet and the number of animals that I have are not a good mix. I agree.

Carpet is like a sponge for everything.

We don't want it is. And so children with allergies, asthma, carpet needs to go. It just, it's not a good thing. So I'm not a fan of carpet. I haven't had carpet for a long time. Cigarette smoking, well, we all know that this is not good for our health, but we all also know people and friends who are addicted to cigarette smoking or just really enjoy it and won't give it up. But smoke concentrations are higher on the floor and that's where our pets spend most of their time. And I have seen all of these problems in my patients over the years from secondhand smoke, lymphoma, asthma, chronic bronchitis, multiple respiratory cancers, skin infections, respiratory infections like the dog that I was talking about. So this, when I have cats with asthma or dogs with chronic bronchitis, my first dog response to the owner is, you need to quit smoking. Do it for your pet. If you won't, do it for yourself, and a lot of people will. Or go outside or ventilate, Ventilate, ventilate. Because it's not fair to the animals. Maybe send them outside if it's cold and you don't want to go outside. Mold. We've all seen mold. 30 to 50% of all structures, so whether it's a house, a business, have damp conditions that encourage development of mold and bacteria. And so we do see a lot of allergic reactions, a lot of asthma, a lot of infectious disease from molds and the mycotoxins that the molds release. So a lot of people, we use humidifiers, and if they're not set correctly, the air gets too damp. Unvented heaters, air conditioners that haven't been cleaned, filters that aren't being changed. We get a lot of moisture and mold and bacterial growth from that, and then those release microbial VOCs. So it's like when I was talking about the carpet. We're basically releasing bacteria into the air. So we have all these VOCs, but then we also have molds and bacteria in the air. So none of it's good causes, all those respiratory things that we talked about. But for our pets, we get the excessive licking and scratching. So the licking of the paws, licking of the skin. Skin, particularly if they are in contact. So if it's a moldy area that they're laying up against or that they're laying on the floor, it's going to cause more problems. We also can get clotting disorders with this. So bleeding from the mouth or the nose if the mold content is high enough. Neurologic problems, for sure. Liver failure and weakened immunity. So molds are a big deal. And I have lived in a couple of places that have had mold issues. It is no fun and can be very difficult to treat. If you're considering home construction or renovation, if at all possible, get your pets out of the house. Contractors coming in and out and then cutting wood, cutting drywall, that sort of thing, you're going to get a lot of dust. And so all those pollutants are hanging in the air. You're going to have VOCs from paint and primers, adhesives, foam insulation that might be being put in lead. If you have anything with lead paint that you're going to be taking out, or asbestos or mold, really a good idea for everyone to leave the house until the renovation is done. I lived in a house that was built in the 1840s when my son was just a couple of years old and we decided that we had those old plaster and lath walls and they were, we had two stairways and going up the stairways as the movement on the steps where it connected to the wall, it kept crumbling and chipping. So we finally decided we were going to take the wall out about halfway up and put in regular wallboard. We did not move out of the house during the process and we did the renovations ourself. With my 2 year old in the house, it never dawned on me that this 1840s house probably had multiple layers of lead paint. We were at a museum in the city a few weeks after that and they were doing free lead testing on children. I had my son tested and we know that high lead toxicity in children can cause besides all sorts of blood issues and, but it can cause mental issues, learning disabilities, brain growth problems. My son tested off the scale for lead and it never dawned on me. And so all of my animals, I'm sure would have tested high as well because we did not move out. So the lesson learned the hard way. Please move out if you are renovating an old house.

So smart, so true. And this picture gives me anxiety, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, this poor little dog. So contain, if you can't move out of the house and let's say you're renovating a kitchen, then please put plastic barriers, tape things off as well as you can so that you try to contain things. Get a commercial grade air scrubber if you can, run air purifiers in other areas of the house. Clean every day, vacuum with, you know, good filters, change your air filters, ventilate the house as much as possible. And like I said, if you've got lead paint and asbestos that are being taken out, please, please try to go somewhere else. Board your pets, send them to a friend's house, a relative's house, whatever you can do. And don't be like me. Send your children somewhere else as well.

You never know, right?

You never know. All right. Cooking. Now, we wouldn't think that cooking would be an issue with air pollution, but it is huge. So natural gas and propane stoves can release carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other pollutants. We can release pollutants from heating oils and fats at high temperature. So when you're really cranking up that temperature on there, Teflon coated cookware releases chemicals in the air that are particularly toxic and deadly to birds. So we don't want to burn food in our Teflon pans, I recommend actually not using them. But Teflon is also found in heat lamps, irons, ironing board covers, stain proof furniture and it's in house dust. Dog beds, carpets, it's kind of everywhere. Self cleaning ovens. Oh my gosh, I would like to leave my house. Every time we turn the oven cleaner on, we usually do it overnight. And then I wake up in the middle of the night going, oh my gosh, why are we in this house? Because it just, it reeks and you know that it's releasing really nasty things into the air. So if we have, you know, these problems going on with cooking and it's really when you get the heat too high or you burn food, worse heart disease, worse lung disease, more asthma, throat and nose irritation for sure. And then could cause nausea, vomiting. Don't keep your birds near your kitchen. And interestingly, I had a lot of birds and they always had their bird cages in the kitchen. I never killed any with cooking. But lesson to be learned, you really should not keep your birds near your kitchen because of this. Especially if you are using Teflon pans. Ventilate really well. Use your, your, your stove over ventilation fan and try not to burn food. I mean, that's kind of a good thing anyway, but all right, have you.

Ever seen the Danny DeVito Teflon spoof videos on YouTube? All right, everyone listening should go and watch that. It'll give you some good depth into the whole Teflon era and how that has all been linked to cancer and everything like that.

I would agree, I would agree. I would avoid it. It's better, better living through chemicals. I'm pretty sure that's that company's motto and not so good. Anyway, wood burning stoves and fireplaces, I've never been a big fan of these because if you are burning wood that has mold or moisture in it, you're releasing all of those mold spores into the air. And so if anyone in the family has asthma or bronchitis, a wood burning stove really should not be part of your daily use. And over 10% of cats have asthma, indoor cats, and I think a lot of them have Asthma because of VOCs, air pollutants, poor quality indoor air owners that smoke wood stoves. I mean, just put all of this together and it's not really a shock that we have 10% of our indoor kitty cats with asthma and we can get pneumonia secondary to that. So avoid fires that smolder. Only burn clean, dry, seasoned wood, not the moldy stuff that's Been sitting there getting gross over the past couple of years. Definitely keep the flu open and the doors closed, so you're not releasing all of that out into the. Into the air. Okay, so now that I've told you all the scary things and you still want your house to smell good, I'm going to give you some things that you can use to make it smell good that are not going to be nasty. So lemon juice is really good at drawing odors out of the air. So you could spray a lemon juice dilution. You can use baking soda to sprinkle on your carpets or bedding. It's real, just like we put the baking soda box in the refrigerator. It's really good at absorbing. Absorbing those odors that you don't like. For cleaning, using dilute white vinegar, you can use it as a spray. So for cleaning, like your cabinet tops, cleaning your bathrooms, your kitchen, for me, I can even use that on my floors because I don't have carpets. You want to increase airflow, bring fresh air from outside, unless your outside air is also heavily contaminated. So if you live in a city, city on the west coast with a lot of smog over the city, that's not the time to open your windows. And then also get pet safe plants. And those pet safe plants could be something that blooms that has a good smell. So I'm a huge fan of gardenias. They're pretty safe for pets. So things like that, that would smell good. And then we want to reduce the VOCs any way we can by purchasing low VOC options. And I know that is available when you're purchasing paint, but it is also available for flooring and furnishings just might, you know, may cost a little more or you may have to search a little harder to find them. Ventilation that is just huge, bringing fresh air in from the outside. So I live out in the country where we have really nice fresh air. And as soon as the temperature hits something tolerable, my windows are open. Except when the pine trees are dropping inches of pine pollen. Then we close everything. Don't want the pollen inside. You can use fans to maximize the air brought in from outside. Keep your temperature and relative humidity as low as possible, because as the temperature gets higher and as the humidity gets higher, we're more likely to breed bacteria, mold, those sorts of things. And then home renovations, try to do it when you could move out. Nobody's around. So indoor water fountains are really good because they're a natural humidifier and they put negative ions in the air, and that helps purify the air. Don't smoke, not in your house. Improve your ventilation. Change air filters regularly. It's interesting. I have so many animals in my house. If I don't change my, my intake filter every month. It's just a hair magnet, so you really want to pay attention to those. You can use an air purifier. There's a lot of different ones out there. If you want candles, do unscented beeswax instead of paraffin candles, and that will help ionize the air as well. Use your exhaust fan when cooking bamboo charcoal air purifying bags. I actually love these. I lived that 1840s house, had a damp basement, and so I had these charcoal bags kind of everywhere in that basement, and it really did help. You can also buy them in small canisters that have little holes in the lid. So those can be really helpful. Indoor pet safe houseplants to help reduce indoor air pollution. Eliminate carpets if at all possible. Vacuum and dust often. And when you dust, I just use a slightly damp rag because otherwise, if you use a dry rag, you're just sending the dust into the air. But if you're spraying with a bunch of scented sprays, you're putting VOCs back into the air. So for me, just a slightly damp rag works really well. And leave your shoes outside. It's amazing how much dust and grime comes in and out of your house on your shoes. We have a little wall in our garage as we go in and out because we have the farm and a bunch of farm animals that everybody has their indoor shoes and their outdoor shoes. And it does help. I will say that it definitely helps. Okay, so there you have it.

That was awesome. Dr. Judy Morgan, everyone. Thank you so much for that. So, you know, the first part of it, I was saying, you know, it's so hard to be healthy. I mean, there's so many things that we have to look out for between us and our pets, of course. But then you gave a lot of great tips at the end of alternatives to be healthier and how to make these decisions. And I think, you know, that's really what it, what it comes down to is having that knowledge and awareness that there are some things that you may want to switch. And having that knowledge of how to switch it is really, really powerful and important. So thank you for that. I. I have a special interest in mold, of course, and, and over the past 12 years, I've been doing a lot of remediation for people in their house, in their houses and things of that nature and have learned so much through that and the patterns of people getting sick, but also their animals. And so, you know, it was really important to kind of drive that home. A lot of people don't realize are animals. And one of the slides you're talking about just how much more sensitive they are, how much more receptors they have, and how much more of an impact that might make. You know, seven and a half million breaths per year is what we take on average. I wonder, I wonder what that number is for pets.

Probably similar. Cats probably a little higher. And dogs about the same. Wow. Definitely more. Birds have a very high metabolism, so their heart rate is like 400. And so I'm sure the respirations are higher as well.

So we have to think about that. Guys, it's important that we look at our air quality because the things that we put into our air, both on purpose and sometimes not on purpose, really impact us and our loved ones. So, Dr. Judy Morgan, anything else that you'd like to share with us today?

So, besides air quality, which is a very important part of our pet's existence, I'm a huge proponent of keeping our pets naturally healthy any way that we can. I have a ton of information on my website, drjudymorgan.com I have books, I have blogs, I have videos on every social media you can imagine. So if you have questions about other health issues with your pets, please look us up.

Drgvmorgan.com well, thank you so much for being here today and participating in the first annual Change the Air Summit. It was so great to have you, and thank you so much. Sa.