PDA

View Full Version : Rescue Dogs Tracked For Ills Related To 9/11



Gold9472
02-17-2006, 03:24 PM
Rescue dogs tracked for ills related to 9/11
Labrador undergoes MRI at Peninsula center as part of long-term study

http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_3519507

:bigcrying

By Christine Morente, STAFF WRITER
2/17/2006

REDWOOD CITY — Kinsey Deeds searched for survivors in the rubble of what was left of the World Trade Center four days after Sept. 11, 2001.

For 11 days, she crawled through cracks and crevices, alert for scents only a survivor would naturally emit.

But there was none.

It was a grueling mission that exposed the 7-year-old urban search-and-rescue canine to only minor cuts — but toxins swirling about ground zero could have affected her internally much worse.

For four years, the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation, the Iams Co. and the University of Pennsylvania have monitored the health of 17 search-and-rescue dogs that helped in the recovery efforts in New York and at the Pentagon.

At 8:20 a.m. Thursday, Kinsey — a black Labrador retriever — went through her third batch of magnetic resonance imaging scans at the Iams Pet Imaging Center in Redwood City.

"At the World Trade Center, there was dust everywhere, and the big concern is asbestos," said Bob Deeds, Kinsey's handler.

Both are with the Texas Task Force 1, an Urban Search and Rescue response team coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"She was walking through it and breathing it," he said. "We at this point don't know anything. We're hoping that everything is OK."

Kinsey was first scanned at the Iams Pet Imaging Centers in Washington, D.C., in 2004 and then a year later in Raleigh, N.C. Previous scans found nothing except for a BB lodged in her nose.

Results of the scans taken from the Redwood City office will be delivered to Kinsey's personal veterinarian in Texas, Deeds said.

The cost for MRI scans averages between $1,500 to $1,800 but is being donated by Iams for the five-year study. So far, none of the 17 dogs has shown any signs of tumors, said John Pantalo, manager of professional and scientific relations for the Iams Pet Imaging Centers.

"We have another year to go to see if these dogs are going to be sentinels for picking up any kind of diseases that may or may not be related to their exposure," he said. "Because the MRI is such a sensitive test, we would be able to pick up something as small as a grain of rice."

Search-and-rescue dogs are more exposed than their handlers because they cannot wear any kind of protective gear over their noses. And those noses are believed by the Department of Defense to be trillions of times stronger and more sensitive than those of humans.

They are trained to find survivors and victims.

"They're better than any machines out there," Deeds said. "The problem is, they can only do so much, depending on the conditions they're working in."

The University of Pennsylvania is compiling the scans and will publish its findings. Pantalo said the study could change policies on what search-and-rescue dogs could be exposed to.

Kinsey and Deeds have worked eight federal deployments, most recently in New Orleans to look for Hurricane Katrina survivors.

Deeds trained Kinsey in 2000 after she was picked up from the Veterans of Foreign Wars Dallas-Fort Worth Lab Rescue.

Kinsey has found two survivors, both unrelated to federal searches.

But at the World Trade Center, there was nobody to find, Deeds said.

"It was too violent," he said.

Typically, search-and-rescue dogs work 12 hours on and 12 hours off, depending on weather and conditions.

"I'm hoping to get three more (years) out of her. She's done an incredible job to have the injuries she's had," Deeds said. "This is what we do. If Kinsey was not doing this, she probably would have been destroyed a long time ago. It's given her a lease on life."