Any new updates that anyone is aware of concerning borates and dogs? I'm thinking of adding borates to my pool as I've had a terrific experience with it in my spa. But my dogs do swim 30 minutes 2-3 times per week in the pool, so just asking.....seems like the posts from last year reflect a high degree of safety for dogs at 50ppm. I'm thinking of just trying 30ppm and see if that's good enough for me. Any reason why I shouldn't try at 30ppm?
Borates and dogs
- Thread starter 3dogowner
- Start date
There is a link in this thread. Section 5.0 Safety lists dogs as 4 times more sensitive to borates.
http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/88524-Interesting-paper-on-the-merits-of-borates
http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/88524-Interesting-paper-on-the-merits-of-borates
There is no known risk to dogs from borates at 30 to 50 ppm. However, there is not anything remotely close to the 100 times safety margin that is normally required for people. If a dog gets all of it's drinking water from the pool, they would be just below the threshold of no detectable effect, rather than 100 times below it as is commonly done with people.
One of our dogs drinks a lot of pool water and hangs out on the sun shelf a lot during summer. He is still fat, dumb and happy after three years of that.
Remember that the purpose of the EPA's Margin of Exposure (MOE) of 100 is a factor of 10 for possible inter-species differences and a factor of 10 for possible intra-species variation. Since the experiment on dogs was with dogs themselves, then the inter-species differences do not apply but that still leaves a factor of 10 for variations between dogs. So the risk is that while dogs in the study didn't show any symptoms until roughly what your dog might drink from the pool if it drank a lot as its sole water source, your dog might be more sensitive. It's probably a low risk, but it's certainly more than most anything else we talk about in terms of chemicals we normally use in the pool.
Based on the LD50 numbers you provided elsewhere chemgeek, I figured my smallest border collie would have to drink more than 25 gallons of pool water at 50 ppm borates per day for days on end to have a real chance of toxicity. If she drank that much, I probably should be more concerned with water toxicity.
So now I'm a complete TFPC BBB convert. I'm borated! And my spa and pool are both gorgeous. Thanks to all on this site.
So now I'm a complete TFPC BBB convert. I'm borated! And my spa and pool are both gorgeous. Thanks to all on this site.
As noted in the thread Are Borates Safe to Use?, the issue isn't toxicity resulting in death, but rather what it would take to get to first symptoms which for male dogs is reduced testicle size. That was at 29 mg/kg/day and the No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) was 8.8 mg/kg/day. So for a 14 kg (31 pound) dog this is 123 mg/day which at 50 ppm borates (ppm Boron) is 0.4 liters (1.7 cups) of water every day that would be at the NOAEL. That's still a lot of water unless they are using the pool as their water source.
The vet took care of that size issue thing a long time ago. If there were a corresponding effect in females, not a problem either. ;-)