At 6:30 a.m. one day last fall, Dave Mazza found himself calling the Pittsburgh Poison Center.
His 1-year-old English bulldog, Humphrey, had just eaten a sizeable amount of plumber's putty meant to seal the plastic caps over his toilet bolts.
"It's one of those things where you don't realize how easily your pets can get into chemicals in your home," said Mazza, regional director of the Pennsylvania Resources Council.
The poison control center told him to take Humphrey to the vet if he acted drowsy or continued to vomit. Humphrey survived and is now just fine.
The council is co-sponsoring the fourth annual series of household hazardous waste collections in Western Pennsylvania with the Char-West Council of Governments. They collect and safely dispose of most chemical products that are illegal to put with typical household trash and could harm trash collectors and the environment.
Pet safety is the focus of this year's collections, which kick off this Saturday with a collection at Settler's Cabin Park in Robinson.
Of the 95,000 calls received last year at the poison control center operated by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 42 percent involved household hazardous waste.
Mike Hutchinson, a doctor of veterinary medicine at Animal General in Cranberry, Butler County, has seen plenty of accidental pet poisonings, often caused by people leaving insecticides and rat poison where dogs can get to them.
"Like with children, you need to put those things on the top shelves, put them in locked cabinets and don't store them in large quantities," Hutchinson said. "Take unneeded amounts to a hazardous waste collection site. These aren't things that need to be stored in large quantities."
In case of an accidental poisoning, contact the Pittsburgh Poison Center at 412-681-6669.
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