Pet Dogs as Sentinels of Environmental Exposures
Companion dogs share many of the same indoor environments, behaviors, and chemical exposures as their owners, making them highly informative sentinels for characterizing residential exposures and associated health outcomes (Wise et al., 2022; Wise et al., 2024). Increasing evidence demonstrates that dogs accumulate many of the same contaminants found in humans, often at comparable or higher concentrations, and may exhibit exposure-related disease patterns earlier due to their shorter lifespans (Matheson et al., 2024; Wise et al., 2025). Our work has also shown that silicone passive samplers correlate with established biomarkers of exposure, further supporting their utility for assessing real-world chemical burden in both dogs and humans (Wise et al., 2020; Wise et al., 2022).
The Stapleton Lab applies a One Health framework to evaluate how household chemical exposures contribute to disease risk across species. By integrating silicone passive samplers, veterinary health data, and large-scale canine cohorts, our work advances understanding of exposure pathways and supports development of early indicators of environmental risk relevant to both dogs and humans.
Why Dogs? Why Now?
As chemical use in consumer products and indoor environments continues to rise, so does the need for innovative and ethical ways to understand exposure risks. Pet dogs provide a unique bridge between environmental monitoring and health research. By leveraging their shared living environments and naturally occurring disease patterns, our work helps uncover exposure-related health risks earlier—and informs strategies to protect both human and animal communities.
Current Research Efforts
Nationwide Exposure Monitoring Using Silicone Samplers
Through collaboration with the Dog Aging Project, we are characterizing geographic and household variability in chemical exposures across a large, diverse population of companion dogs. Using silicone passive samplers—silicone tags worn by dogs—we quantify pesticides, flame retardants, and other environmental contaminants within shared home environments. These minimally invasive silicone tags provide robust, integrative measures of real-world exposures in dogs, and their relevance to human exposure assessment has already been demonstrated in our previous work (Wise et al., 2020; Wise et al., 2022).
Canine Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors
We examine how environmental exposures contribute to cancer in dogs, leveraging targeted case–control studies and large biobanks. Current work includes chemical exposure assessments associated with bladder cancer in dogs (Wise et al., 2025) and analyses of samples from the Morris Animal Foundation Golden Retriever Lifetime Study (GRLS) biobank to investigate potential environmental risk factors for hemangiosarcoma. The GRLS hemangiosarcoma project is funded by the Canine Cancer Alliance.
Publications
Wise, C.F., Herkert, N.J., Hoffman, K., Vaden, S.L., Breen, M., Stapleton, H.M. 2025. Environmental Exposures and Canine Cancer: A Case-Control Study Using Silicone Passive Samplers. Environmental Science & Technology, 59(2):1121–1132. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c06736. PMID: 39786168. PMCID: pending.
Wise, C.F., Breen, M., Stapleton, H.M. 2024. Canine on the Couch – The New Canary in the Coal Mine for Environmental Health Research. Environment & Health, 2(8):517–529. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-024-00258-8. PMID: 39170948. PMCID: PMC11334179.
Matheson, R., Sexton, C.L., Wise, C.F., O’Brien, J., Keyser, A.J., Kauffman, M., Dunbar, M.D., DAP Consortium, Stapleton, H.M., Ruple, A. 2024. Silicone Tags as an Effective Method of Monitoring Environmental Contaminant Exposures in a Geographically Diverse Sample of Dogs From the Dog Aging Project. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 11:1394061. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2024.1394061. PMID: 39220770. PMCID: PMC11363705.
Wise, C.F., Hammel, S.C., Herkert, N., Ospina, M., Calafat, A.M., Breen, M., Stapleton, H.M. 2022. Comparative Assessment of Pesticide Exposures in Domestic Dogs and Their Owners Using Silicone Passive Samplers and Biomonitoring. Environmental Science & Technology, 56(2):1149–1161. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04784. PMID: 34964617. PMCID: PMC10150270.
Wise, C.F., Hammel, S.C., Herkert, N., Ma, J., Motsinger-Reif, A., Stapleton, H.M., Breen, M. 2020. Comparative Exposure Assessment Using Silicone Passive Samplers Indicates Domestic Dogs are Sentinels to Support Human Health Research. Environmental Science & Technology, 54(12):7409–7419. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c01277. PMID: 32401030. PMCID: PMC7655112.