Pet Poison Helpline launches poisonous plant map

The Pet Poison Helpline announced today its development of Toxin Trends, an interactive online tool created to help veterinary professionals and the public research potentially poisonous and dangerous plants in their community. The map consists of analyzed propriety call data from calls the Pet Poison Helpline received between 2017 and 2022.

"Over its 18 years in business, Pet Poison Helpline, your trusted source for pet toxicology advice, has developed an extensive database of poisoning cases based on emergency calls from pet owners and veterinary professionals in the United States and Canada," said Renee Schmid, DVM, DABT, DABVT, a senior veterinary toxicologist at Pet Poison Helpline, in an organizational release.¹

"Our new Toxin Trends tool identifies the top 30 potentially dangerous plants to pets based on our last five years of call data and identifies where in the country pets are most at risk for that particular exposure," she continued.

According to the release, some of the current findings Toxin Trends displayed are that pets living in Arizona may be more at risk for oleander poisoning while Florida pets or pets located in the southeastern region of the United States are more likely to be exposed to Sago palm. Other finds showed that 96.1% of felines were exposed to the Peruvian lily, 96.1% of canines were exposed to lantana, and the calla lily exposure was split between 51.6% for cats and 47.3% for dogs.¹

"Our goal with Toxin Trends is to make pet owners and veterinary professionals aware of the most common dangerous plants, and then identify which of those plants have resulted in emergency calls in their area," explained Schmid. "It is a valuable tool for all pet lovers."

In the future, Pet Poison Helpline plans to release future iterations onto the Toxin Trends dashboard to highlight additional insights. All insights will come from the company’s database of emergency calls with the goal that this shared data will make the world a safer place for pets.

Reference

Pet Toxicology Experts Release Regional Poisonous Plant Map. News release. Pet Poison Helpline. September 14, 2022. Accessed September 14, 2022. https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pet-toxicology-experts-release-regional-poisonous-plant-map-301623907.html