S.1110 and pet-blogging

S.1110 : A bill to amend the Federal Hazardous Substances Act to require engine coolant and antifreeze to contain a bittering agent in order to render the coolant or antifreeze unpalatable.
Sponsor: Sen Allen, George [Rep-VA] (introduced 5/24/2005)
Cosponsors (11)
Committees: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Latest Major Action: 11/17/2005 Senate committee/subcommittee actions.
Status: Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Ordered to be reported with amendments favorably.

Back when Shadow was a 10 week old kitten, he escaped the house into the garage, where he promptly scampered under the car. I retrieved him and returned him to the living room and continued on with my day. A couple of hours later, unable to locate him, I began looking for the wayward creature. I found him in the litter box, in a coma.

The vet determined that in that few moments playing under the car, he’d licked up a couple of drops of leaked coolant. A long 24 hours followed, with my pet hooked up to an iv while they tried to flush the antifreeze from his system and keep him alive with stimulants. Through that active intervention, Shadow survived, but with significant brain and kidney damage.

It took 6 months for Rogue to teach him how to bathe himself again. Eleven years later, he still gets lost in the back yard if he steps out of site of the door. He’s forever a 10 week old kitten.

Had the antifreeze tasted bad, he probably wouldn’t have taken a second sip, and the outcome would have been different. This bill would require that coolant manufacturers mask that sweet taste with something bitter, hopefully cutting down on animal deaths due to ingestion. I have no figures on how much this would cost to implement, but I doubt it’s more than pennies on the gallon.

I’m pleased it received a positive report from committee in the Senate. This measure could prevent thousands of needless pet poisonings and deaths a year.

Update: Jeff Hess from Have Coffee Will Write informs me that animals are not the only ones dying from ethyl glycol. A man is under indictment in MA for allegedly killing his wife by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze, and a Google search turns up the case of a woman in GA who was convicted of killing her husband by antifreeze poisoning. Perhaps if the taste had been bitter instead of sweet, they might have had a chance of detecting it.

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