A few months ago, I took our new puppy to the vet to get his rabies shot and other puppy vaccines. 

It is not lost on me in how similarly we care for our pets and our children. We feed them good food, teach them life skills, play with them and, of course, try to keep them as healthy as we can.

We can even buy health insurance for our pets. “Be prepared for the unexpected illness” goes the sales pitch. 

So that started me thinking about the reality that our pets (and our children) can develop the same horrible cancers that adults are prone to. Our lifestyles are sort of the same in that our pets live with us, share the same couch to sit on while watching a movie, sleep on fluffy beds with memory foam filler, drink the same water, breathe the same air. 

There are major differences. Pets do not smoke or drink; they get way more exercise that we do; they typically do not work 10 hours a day in jobs or workplaces that could expose them to harmful substances. Yet they can suffer the same types of cancer and other terminal diseases.

I asked our vet if there were any national studies that are trying to find the causes of those diseases in our pets. He did not know of any such study.

I started thinking of research I had done to develop a class on healthy building materials for Yestermorrow Design/Build School. Part of that work was a deep study of The Six Classes, www.sixclasses.org. 

This is an in-depth study of six classes of harmful chemicals that have nestled their way into our daily lives. We find them (actually, they are well hidden) in most of our daily use products, flooring, furniture coverings, clothing, cookware. Phthalates and bisphenols in the plastic juice containers in the dairy aisle, flame retardants in the foam cushions and on the synthetic fabric of our furniture, PFAS or highly flourinated chemicals in our cookware, in our clothing, in paint—and the list goes on. 

Polyvinyl chloride (think East Palestine, OH) is in flooring (luxury vinyl tile), house siding, “oil cloth” table coverings, paint and more.

Six Classes thoroughly documents, through scientific studies, how these chemicals are endocrine disruptors and can wreak havoc on and in our bodies. We live, breathe, sleep, recreate and eat and drink them every living moment of our lives. Ah, there is the rub—our pet’s lives also.