Pet Gear After a Flood or Fire: What to Throw Away, What to Wash, and Who Published Each Rule

The gear survived. That is the part nobody prepares you for. You expected to come back to a pile of ruined things and instead the crate is standing there looking almost normal, the harness is hanging on its hook, the stainless bowls are in the dish rack with a tide line on them, and the bed is heavy and cold and smells like something you cannot name. Nothing here is obviously destroyed. Everything here has been through something. And the animal is in the car, waiting to use all of it again.

This page is the triage on that pile. It is not a maintenance schedule. Our pet emergency kit rotation checklist covers the calendar version of this question, where good gear gets refreshed on a clock because water gets old and batteries die and a puppy outgrows a carrier. That is a different job entirely. This is contamination triage on gear that made it through a flood or a fire, where the item is intact and the question is what is now in it. Bowls belong here and only here, because a bowl is the one piece of equipment that puts whatever the disaster left behind directly into the animal’s mouth.

One boundary before anything else, because it decides half of what people search for. Food is not on this page. Whether the kibble, the cans, the treats and the refrigerated food are salvageable is a separate question with its own published rules, its own container definitions and its own agency, and our page on whether pet food is safe after a flood or a power outage works those through with FDA quoted directly. This page stops at the bowl.

The Honest Version of the Answer

There is no agency list of pet gear to keep or discard after a disaster. We looked for one. What exists instead is a large, consistent body of published guidance about materials, written by federal agencies and state health departments for household possessions, plus a small number of pet-specific sentences from a county health department, a poison control center and a national animal-response body. The disposition table below is built by putting your gear into the material classes those documents already rule on, and it names which document ruled on which class.

That distinction matters more than it sounds, because it tells you exactly how far each row can be trusted. A row that says “EPA puts this material in its top tier” is standing on published text. A row that says “this is a cushion with a cover and the cover is the only part you can verify” is us reasoning from a published rule to an object the rule does not name, and every row where that is happening says so in the row.

What nobody publishes, and we searched for it, is a porosity threshold. There is no percentage, no absorption figure, no measurement you can take at home that turns into a keep-or-bin answer. The published test is operational rather than numeric, and it appears in almost identical form across four separate documents: can the item be cleaned, and can it be dried, all the way through, in time. If the answer is no, it goes. If you cannot tell, the state health departments answer that too, and they answer it the same way people have always answered it in a wet garage.

The Minnesota Department of Health puts it as a heading of its own: “When in doubt, throw it out!” The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services closes its flood cleaning sheet with “If in DOUBT, throw it OUT!” Those are two agencies making the same call in near-identical words, which is worth noticing precisely because so little else in this topic is that unanimous.

Before You Touch Any of It

The sorting is a cleanup task, and cleanup tasks have their own exposure. Two federal-family documents set the rules, and they are not the same document and they do not carry the same list.

Some people should not do this work. The “Homeowner’s and Renter’s Guide to Mold Cleanup After Disasters”, published on epa.gov and described there as developed by EPA, HUD, FEMA, NIH and CDC, states: “People with breathing problems like asthma or who have weakened immune systems should stay away from moldy sites. Children should not take part in disaster cleanup work.” That sentence is not a recommendation to wear better equipment instead. It is an instruction to be somewhere else.

For a fire, EPA’s “Protect Yourself from Ash” page publishes a separate list for a separate hazard, and it gates the whole thing on someone else’s decision first: “When authorities say it is safe to return to your property, you should be careful to protect yourself and your family from ash. The recommended actions in this fact sheet are for everyone going to sites contaminated by ash. People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and pregnant women should not participate in ash cleanup efforts.” And immediately after, “Children should not be near ash or sites contaminated with ash. Children should be permitted to return only after affected areas have been cleaned up.” Two documents, two lists, two hazards. Do not merge them into one.

What to wear is also two lists. For a mold or flood site, the mold guide says to wear at least an N-95 respirator, and adds a detail people get wrong: “Protect your eyes. Wear goggles that provide complete eye protection. Choose goggles designed to keep out dust and small particles. Safety glasses or goggles that have open vent holes will not protect you against dust and small particles.” For gloves it says “Wear protective gloves (non-latex, vinyl, nitrile, or rubber). Do not touch mold or moldy items with bare hands.”

For an ash site, EPA’s list is its own: “Clothing: Wear work gloves, long-sleeved shirts, long pants, socks, and sturdy, thick-soled shoes to avoid skin contact”, plus “Wear goggles and head coverings to keep ash out of your eyes and hair”, and for the lungs, “Select a respirator that is NIOSH Approved® and has the words “NIOSH” and either “N95” or “P100” printed on it.“ EPA then rules out the thing most people already own: “Surgical masks and one-strap dust masks will not protect your lungs. They are not designed to seal tightly to the face.” The paragraph does not stop there, and the last sentence is the one to read twice: “If you have heart or lung disease talk to your health provider before using a respirator or working around ash.”

The respirator is for you. A reader who has just been told to put on an N95 will look at the animal and have an idea. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health closed that door in print: “Do not place an N95 respirator on your pet. N95 respirators for people can be harmful if used on pets. Elastic straps can choke or strangle pets and the mask material can block their ability to breathe through their nose or pant.”

Ash on your own skin has its own sentence, and it is short. EPA: “If you get ash on your skin, in your eyes, or in your mouth, wash it off as soon as you can.” The same page also notes, in the clothing paragraph, that “Contact with wet ash can cause chemical burns or skin irritation.”

Do not mix cleaning products. This one is quoted rather than written in our own voice because two agencies publish it in two different wordings, and the difference is worth preserving. The mold guide’s numbered step six reads: “If you use cleaning products, do not mix cleaning products together. DO NOT mix bleach and ammonia because it can create toxic vapors.” EPA’s separate publication “A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home” words it differently: “Never mix chlorine bleach solution with other cleaning solutions or detergents that contain ammonia because toxic fumes could be produced.” Those are two sentences from two documents. They are not the same sentence and neither agency wrote the other one.

The Brief Guide’s paragraph also carries something that gets cut off when people quote only the mixing rule. The sentence leading into it reads: “The use of a chemical or biocide that kills organisms such as mold (chlorine bleach, for example) is not recommended as a routine practice during mold cleanup.” EPA’s own exception is attached right there, in the very next sentence of the same paragraph, not tucked away somewhere else: “There may be instances, however, when professional judgment may indicate its use (for example, when immune-compromised individuals are present).” Only in the paragraph after that, following a sentence about why sterilizing an area is neither possible nor desirable, does the guide add: “If you choose to use disinfectants or biocides, always ventilate the area and exhaust the air to the outdoors.” So EPA’s position is not that bleach is the default step and mixing is the exception. It is that bleach is not the routine step, that EPA’s own carve-out for using it is professional judgment rather than a homeowner’s, and that if you do use it, ventilate.

The sentence that closes that same paragraph is the one to keep in mind through every row of the table below: “Please note: Dead mold may still cause allergic reactions in some people, so it is not enough to simply kill the mold, it must also be removed.” Killing is not the finish line. Removal is, and removal is exactly what a porous item does not let you verify.

After you finish for the day. The mold guide, under its own heading “AFTER YOU LEAVE A MOLD SITE”: “Shower and change your clothes. This will help you avoid carrying mold and other hazards back to your current living quarters.” That instruction is written about a mold site. We are not extending it to ash or floodwater generally, because those are the guide’s own words about the guide’s own subject.

If someone is exposed. For a person, America’s Poison Centers publishes the national Poison Help line at 1-800-222-1222, and states that through that line and the PoisonHelp.org website “our member centers provide all Americans expert advice, 24/7/365 at no cost.” For an animal, ASPCA Animal Poison Control publishes “(888) 426-4435”, describes itself as available “24 hours a day, 365 days a year”, and states “A consultation fee may apply.” Two numbers, two species, and they are not interchangeable.

The Four Tests That Decide Every Row

Every call in the table below comes from one of four published tests. Knowing which test is doing the work in a given row is what lets you extend the table to an item we did not list.

Test one: EPA’s three tiers, which exist only inside a picture

This is the single most useful document for this page, and almost nobody quotes it, because its content is not in the page’s text. EPA’s “Things to Keep and Throw Away” page under Flooded Homes has a body that is essentially a link. The actual guidance is inside a graphic titled “What Can I Keep?”, published as both an image and a PDF, and a text extraction of that PDF returns garbled decorative type. You have to look at it.

When you do, it sorts household possessions into three headed tiers:

“Keep it & Clean it” contains, in the graphic’s own labels: Metal Furniture, China Dishware Ceramics, Silverware & Kitchen Utensils, Plastic Furniture, Jewelry, and Glass.

“It’s a Maybe” contains: Photos & Books, Bedding & Blankets, Rugs, Solid Wood Furniture, Clothing, and Appliances & Electronic Devices.

“Best to Remove It” contains: Mattresses, Leather Furniture, Medicine, Cloth Upholstered Furniture, Cushions & Pillows, and Wood Veneer Furniture.

The graphic’s footer reads “Learn more on how to treat and clean different material at epa.gov/flooded-homes”, and the page carrying it was last updated April 2, 2026.

Notice what that gives you. Plastic is in the top tier by name. Ceramics are in the top tier by name. Metal and glass are in the top tier by name. Textiles and bedding are a middle tier, an explicit maybe rather than a yes. And cushions, upholstery and mattresses, the three things a pet bed is made of, are in the bottom tier. EPA is not writing about pet gear. It is writing about the exact materials pet gear is made of.

Test two: the porous rule, and the reason attached to it

The Minnesota Department of Health’s flood cleanup page (Last Updated 03/20/2026) publishes the rule with its reasoning intact: “Take out and throw away porous items that touched the flood water or have visible mold growth. Wallboard, wallpaper, insulation, carpeting, seat cushions, mattresses and pressed wood furniture are examples. They are difficult to clean and dry and can have mold and other hazards on the inside and backside.”

That last clause is the whole mechanism. The problem is not that porous things are dirtier. It is that the contamination goes where you cannot reach it and cannot inspect it, and the drying you can verify is on the outside.

EPA’s “Mold Cleanup in Your Home” page (Last updated June 4, 2026) states the same mechanism about a different set of examples: “Absorbent or porous materials, such as ceiling tiles and carpet, may have to be thrown away if they become moldy. Mold can grow on or fill in the empty spaces and crevices of porous materials, so the mold may be difficult or impossible to remove completely.”

And Minnesota gives the corresponding rule for the other side: “Check hard materials that are “nonporous” and “semi-porous”, to see if they are structurally sound. This may include concrete, countertops, metal, glass, tile, solid wood (such as studs), and appliances. Scrub and clean with soap and safe water.“ The operative words there are structurally sound. A hard item is a keeper only if it is not cracked.

Read the two steps that follow that one on Minnesota’s own page, because scrubbing is not where its sequence ends. Under “Rinse with safe water”: “Scrub and rinse with safe water before using a product to treat the surfaces. Products like bleach work better on surfaces with minimal soiling. Quickly remove the rinse water so materials stay wet briefly.” Then under “Apply product to kill residual germs”: “Apply diluted bleach (1 cup household bleach per 5 gallon of water). If there was mold growth, use 1 cup bleach per 1 gallon of water. Let bleach solution sit for about 30 minutes and then rinse again with safe water.” Those are Minnesota’s figures for building surfaces in a flooded structure. They are quoted here so you can see that a published sequence exists and where it lives, not so they can be lifted onto a food bowl or a crate, and the ASPCA condition further down still applies to anything the animal comes back around.

Test three: the clock

The mold guide’s numbered step eight: “Throw away items that can’t be cleaned and dried. Throw away anything that was wet with flood water and can’t be cleaned and dried completely within 24 to 48 hours. If you have precious items that you want to preserve, follow these guidelines from the Smithsonian Institute”, followed by a link.

Two things in there. First, the window is stated as a property of the item, not of the disaster: the question is whether this thing can be cleaned and dried completely inside it. Second, that final sentence is a real carve-out and it is almost never quoted. A collar with a dead animal’s name on it is a precious item. The guide anticipated that, and it routes those to a preservation authority rather than to a home method. Earlier in the same document the guide sets the underlying premise: “Was your home flooded? If so, and you were not able to dry your home (including furniture and other items) within 24-48 hours, you should assume you have mold growth.”

This clock belongs to flood water and mold. It is not a food rule, it is not a chemical rule, and it does not travel to either.

Test four: is it broken

The simplest test, and the one that resolves more pet gear than any of the others, because pet gear takes abuse in normal use before the disaster ever happens. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services sheet “Cleaning and Disinfecting After a Flood” (Revised 6-23-24) opens with it as rule one: “Items that are broken, have been torn, splintered, cracked, dented, etc. should be thrown away immediately and replaced.”

A chewed carrier zip, a frayed harness strap, a crazed ceramic bowl, a crate with a cracked door latch. All of those fail rule one before you get to the material question, and a lot of pet gear was already halfway there.

Iowa’s sheet then splits the rest three ways. Small absorbent items, its examples being “bedding, clothing, stuffed animals, etc.”, get a wash procedure. Large absorbent items, its examples being “patio upholstered furniture, mattresses, wall to wall carpeting, etc.”, get one instruction: they “MUST be thrown away.” And solid items get a third: “Items that are solid, or will not absorb water, such as concrete, tile or vinyl flooring, plastic patio furniture, plastic toys, picture frames, etc. can be cleaned with a mild household detergent solution.”

Iowa names plastic toys explicitly in the solid class. That is the closest any of these documents comes to naming a pet item, and it is why the hard-toy row below is a keep rather than a judgment call.

Iowa’s rule five is the step after that one, and it is the reason this page can point at a disinfecting procedure without owning a number: “Prepare a bleach solution following the manufacturer’s label instructions for disinfecting. To disinfect solid items (after cleaning), make a mild bleach and water solution.” Iowa then gives three ways to use it, including “Put small objects into the bleach/water solution for one minute. Remove from the solution and allow to air dry.” Note where Iowa sends you for the strength: the manufacturer’s label on the bottle in your hand, not a figure typed on a website.

The Table

Every disposition below is followed by the document it rests on. Where the row is our reasoning applied to an item the source does not name, the row says “our call” and states what it is reasoning from. Nothing in the table is a guarantee that an item is clean, decontaminated or safe. The documents quoted on this page say an item can be cleaned, can be safely cleaned, or, once diluted and rinsed, can be safely used around the animal again. That is permission to do the action, not a certification that the action, once done, produced a decontaminated or sterile result. No document quoted here describes a pet item as decontaminated, sterile or certified safe after a home cleaning, and neither does this table.

Item	Flood water	Fire, smoke and ash	What the call rests on
Nylon or polyester harness, flat webbing, no padding	Wash, unless torn or frayed	Wash	Iowa’s rule one sends a torn item to the bin. Iowa’s wash procedure is written for small absorbent items including clothing. EPA’s graphic puts Clothing in “It’s a Maybe”. Our call to read flat webbing as clothing rather than as cushion.
Harness or vest with foam padding, or a padded collar	Discard is the safer call	Wash the shell if the padding is removable, otherwise discard	Our call. It rests on Minnesota’s porous rule and its stated reason, that porous items are difficult to clean and dry and can hold hazards on the inside and backside, plus EPA placing Cushions & Pillows in “Best to Remove It”. No source names a padded harness.
Leash, flat webbing or rope	Wash the webbing; discard rope	Wash the webbing; discard rope	Iowa’s small-absorbent wash procedure for webbing. Rope is our call, on the same inside-you-cannot-inspect reasoning Minnesota publishes. Also see the NASAAEP position below, which is stricter than either.
Collar with metal hardware	Wash, or replace and keep the tags	Wash	NASAAEP states directly: “A collar might be difficult to clean, but tags might be more readily cleaned and returned.”
Hard plastic or wire crate	Keep and clean, if structurally sound	Keep and clean	EPA’s graphic puts Plastic Furniture and Metal Furniture in “Keep it & Clean it”. Minnesota tells you to check hard materials to see if they are structurally sound, then scrub and clean with soap and safe water.
Soft-sided carrier with padded base and mesh	Discard is the safer call	Clean if lightly soiled, otherwise discard	Our call for flood, on EPA’s “Best to Remove It” placement of Cloth Upholstered Furniture and Cushions & Pillows. For ash, EPA states “Upholstered furniture that is lightly soiled may be able to be cleaned.”
Crate pad, pet bed, blanket	Discard the stuffed bed. Launder a flat blanket or a removable cover	Launder, and clean it before the animal uses it	EPA’s graphic: Cushions & Pillows and Mattresses are “Best to Remove It”; Bedding & Blankets is “It’s a Maybe”. Iowa: large absorbent items “MUST be thrown away”. LA County for the fire case: clean bedding before your pet uses it.
Ceramic bowl	Keep, wash and sanitize, if not cracked or crazed	Clean before use	FDA names ceramic dishes in its wash-and-sanitize instruction. EPA’s graphic puts China Dishware Ceramics in “Keep it & Clean it”. Iowa’s rule one bins a cracked one.
Stainless steel bowl	Keep, wash and sanitize	Clean before use	FDA names metal pans and utensils. EPA’s graphic puts Metal Furniture and Silverware & Kitchen Utensils in “Keep it & Clean it”.
Plastic bowl	Keep and clean if sound; discard if scratched, crazed or chewed	Clean before use	EPA’s graphic puts Plastic Furniture in “Keep it & Clean it” and Iowa puts plastic in its solid, non-absorbing class. The word plastic does not appear on FDA’s flood page. The scratched-bowl exclusion is our call under Iowa’s rule one.
Hard rubber or hard plastic toy	Keep and clean if not chewed through	Clean before the animal uses it	Iowa names plastic toys in the solid class that can be cleaned with a mild household detergent solution. LA County says to clean toys before your pet uses them.
Plush, rope or fabric toy	Discard	Launder if it is washable, otherwise discard	Iowa puts stuffed animals in the small-absorbent wash group, but its rule one bins anything torn, and most used plush toys are. Our call to weight rule one over the wash route here, on the chewing hazard.
Litter box, plastic	Keep and clean if sound	Clean before use	EPA’s graphic and Iowa’s solid class both cover hard plastic. Our call to apply them to a litter pan, which no source names.
Litter, in the bag or in the box	Discard	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	Our call for flood, from Minnesota’s porous rule; litter is absorbent by design and no source we found names it. For fire, LA County publishes a food rule, not a litter rule; the discard call there is ours.
Unopened all-metal cans and retort pouches	FDA publishes a full reconditioning procedure; see below	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	FDA for the flood case. LA County states “Any food that has been exposed to smoke, heat or fire should be discarded.”
Bagged kibble, treats, chews, cardboard-boxed food	Discard	Discard if exposed to smoke, heat or fire	FDA’s not-waterproof definition and its cardboard rule; see the food section below, and our separate food page.
Medications and supplements	Discard	Discard	EPA’s graphic puts Medicine in “Best to Remove It”. Replacement is a veterinary conversation, not a cleaning one.
Paper records, vaccination certificates	Photograph or copy, then treat the paper as a maybe	Photograph or copy	EPA’s graphic puts Photos & Books in “It’s a Maybe”. NASAAEP: items that cannot be decontaminated “may need to be replaced, photographed, or copied.”

Why the Bed Is the Hardest Row, and the Bowl Is the Easiest

Two rows in that table are worth walking through, because they show the reasoning in both directions.

The bed. A stuffed pet bed is a cushion inside a cover. EPA’s graphic sorts those two components into two different tiers: Bedding & Blankets sits in “It’s a Maybe”, and Cushions & Pillows sits in “Best to Remove It”. That is not EPA being inconsistent. It is EPA sorting by whether the inside of the object can be reached. Minnesota’s rule states the same thing as a mechanism rather than a tier, naming seat cushions and mattresses among the porous items to throw away because “They are difficult to clean and dry and can have mold and other hazards on the inside and backside.” Iowa is flatter still about the large version: large absorbent items “MUST be thrown away.”

So the honest disposition on a flood-soaked stuffed bed is discard, and the honest disposition on a zip-off cover is launder. Neither of those is a rule anyone published about pet beds. Both are the published rules about the materials, applied to the object, and we are telling you that is what is happening.

There is one exception with a published route. If the bed is genuinely irreplaceable, the mold guide sends precious items to preservation guidelines from the Smithsonian Institute rather than to any home procedure. That is a real door and most pages leave it out.

The bowl. The bowl is easy, and it is easy for a reason worth naming: it is the one pet item that is also a household item that agencies already write rules about. FDA’s flood page instructs: “Thoroughly wash metal pans, ceramic dishes, and utensils (including can openers) with soap and water, using hot water if available. Rinse and then sanitize them by boiling in clean water or immersing them for 15 minutes in a solution of 1 tablespoon of unscented household (5.25% concentration) liquid bleach per gallon of water.”

Those numbers are FDA’s, for dishes, written for human food. They are quoted here and they stay quoted. Do not round them, do not convert them, and do not carry them to anything that is not a dish. FDA also publishes a printable version of the same document, dated January 2023, which words the strength differently, so read the numbers off whichever FDA page you actually have open rather than from a summary. Our pet food page sets those two versions side by side.

Note also what FDA’s sentence does not say. It names metal pans, ceramic dishes and utensils. The word plastic does not appear anywhere on that page, in the rendered text or the raw HTML. That is not FDA ruling against plastic. It is FDA not addressing it, and the honest response is to go find a source that does, which is what EPA’s graphic and Iowa’s solid-items class provide.

One more condition applies to any bowl you bleach, and it comes from a different organization for a different reason. ASPCA Animal Poison Control states: “Diluted bleach can be safely used to clean pet toys and kennels, as long as it is diluted, thoroughly rinsed and the bleach odor has dissipated prior to letting the pet back around the items.” FDA is the authority on the dish. ASPCA is the authority on when the animal comes back to it. Those are two separate sentences from two separate organizations and they do different jobs.

The Bleach Section, Read All the Way Through

More people will get hurt on this page’s subject by cleaning products than by contamination, so this section quotes rather than summarizes.

ASPCA Animal Poison Control’s Poisonous Household Products page opens its cleaning-products section with a sentence that is often quoted as reassurance and is not one: “Most cleaning products are safe to use around dogs and cats as long as they are used per labeled directions.” Read the condition. Per labeled directions. A bleach solution mixed to a strength you invented, applied to an object the label does not contemplate, is not inside that sentence. And read the sentence that follows it, which is the part that gets cut: “Obtain veterinary advice when using cleaning products around birds, as they are extremely sensitive to the fumes.”

Then the bleach entry itself, in full, both sentences: “Ingestion of undiluted bleach can cause injury to the mouth and esophagus, especially if it is a high concentration or has a high pH.” And: “Diluted bleach can be safely used to clean pet toys and kennels, as long as it is diluted, thoroughly rinsed and the bleach odor has dissipated prior to letting the pet back around the items.”

Three conditions in one clause. Diluted. Thoroughly rinsed. Odor dissipated. All three, before the animal is back around the item, not before the animal uses it. ASPCA does not publish a ratio and neither do we.

While you are in the laundry room, two more entries from the same ASPCA page are directly relevant, because the person washing a flood-soaked pet bed cover is exactly the person who reaches for these. On dryer sheets: “Most laundry dryer sheets, especially those that are unused, contain cationic detergents. These detergents can cause severe chemical burns and ulcers to the pet’s mouth, esophagus and stomach. Additionally, the sheets can pose a risk of a foreign body obstruction in the stomach or intestines and can be a medical emergency.” On fabric softeners: “Most fabric softeners also contain cationic detergents which can cause severe chemical burns and ulcers to the pet’s mouth, esophagus and stomach.”

The washing instruction with actual numbers in it comes from Iowa, and it is a household-laundry instruction rather than a pet instruction. For small items soaked by flood water that will absorb water, Iowa’s sheet says to soak them in cold water first to remove mud and filth, warns “DO NOT pre-soak in your washer as it may cause damage to the machine”, then says “Use hot water and detergent when washing items in the washing machine. Be careful not to overload the washing machine”, then “Add 1 cup of liquid chlorine bleach to wash water before adding clothes or other items, use ½ cup bleach for front loading washers”, and finally “Tumble dry in a dryer or hang items to dry in the sun.” Iowa’s numbers, Iowa’s scope, and the ASPCA condition still applies before any of it goes back on the animal.

And the rule that outranks all of it, from the mold guide: “If you use cleaning products, do not mix cleaning products together. DO NOT mix bleach and ammonia because it can create toxic vapors.” Nobody thinks they are using ammonia. If you want to know which products in your house contain it, read the labels in front of you rather than a list on a page like this one, because we did not find a source that publishes that inventory and we are not going to invent one.

The Gear the Animal Was Actually Wearing

Everything above assumes the gear was in the house. The collar, harness and leash on the animal during the event are a different category, and there is exactly one document that treats them as such.

NASAAEP’s 2023 “Current Best Practices in Animal Emergency Management: Decontamination”, produced under a USDA APHIS Animal Care cooperative agreement with the University of Kentucky, handles accessories in its main text like this: “Some items may be able to be decontaminated and returned to the owner. A collar might be difficult to clean, but tags might be more readily cleaned and returned.” And then the general rule: “Items that cannot be decontaminated may need to be replaced, photographed, or copied, depending on the circumstances and importance of the item.”

That is the most useful disposition sentence in this entire literature, because it is the only one written about pet accessories by name, and it names the fallback: photograph or copy what you cannot keep. If a collar has to go, photograph it with the tags legible before it goes, and get the microchip and rabies tag numbers into the record. Our waterproof document kit page covers where those numbers should live, and the crate and kennel emergency ID card is the artifact that carries them when the collar does not.

Appendix F of the same document goes further, and this is where the framing matters. Appendix F contains a sample standard operating procedure that the document introduces this way: it “was provided courtesy of the State Radiological Incident Response Planning Work Group”, it is a template for a jurisdiction writing its own, “Not all statements in the sample SOP will apply to all jurisdictions”, and “Use this document only as a guide to creating an SOP appropriate to your jurisdiction.” The SOP itself is written for a fictional nuclear generating station in a fictional county. It is a responder decontamination corridor, not a homeowner’s bathroom.

Inside that corridor, the accessory rule reads: “All leashes, collars, and other items being worn by the pet will be removed and placed in the appropriate container for contaminated items. Leashes, collars, and other items may not be able to be decontaminated and therefore not returned to the owner. If an item cannot be decontaminated, or if time does not permit decontamination of these items, the items will be disposed of along with other contaminated waste.”

Two things travel with that quote and must not be separated from it. The same appendix states “Only trained personnel should attempt to decontaminate any animal.” And where owners are involved at all, it is supervised: “Under some circumstances, it may be practical to allow owners to decontaminate their pets. In these cases, and before the owner goes through decontamination, the owner should be given proper PPE, shown how to don the PPE, and given instructions on how to decontaminate their pet. If possible, a member of the decontamination unit should supervise this operation.”

So do not read Appendix F as a home procedure. Read it as the professional answer to the same question you are asking, which is genuinely useful for one reason: the professionals who do this for a living, with a full corridor and trained staff, treat worn accessories as probable waste rather than as probable salvage. That is a strong signal about what an intact-looking collar is actually carrying. It also tells you what the equipment list looks like, since Appendix D’s bucket entry exists “Used to throw in the contaminated collars, leashes, and used brushes until they can be collected in bags for disposal” and, in the same entry, “Also can be used to decontaminate metal items that will be reused.” Metal gets reused. The webbing goes in the bag.

What none of this gives you is a procedure for washing the animal itself. NASAAEP’s own dog instruction is “Wash the dog with soap and water. Warm water is preferable”, and for cats, “Diluted liquid soap/shampoo can be sprayed onto the cat using a small trigger sprayer. The cat in the wire cage should then be gently sprayed with water. Warm water is preferred. Do not use a strong stream of water as this may cause the cat to panic in the cage and be injured.” Diluted, with no ratio attached to that instruction; the one ratio the document does publish is the Appendix D canine foot bath, disclosed below. Warm, with no temperature attached to the word. No contact time for either the dog wash or the cat spray. Those are not omissions we are filling in, and if you need the animal cleaned rather than the equipment, that is a veterinary conversation and a different page.

Cans, Bowls and the Line Between Them

FDA’s flood guidance is the authority on containers, and its rules matter here for one reason only: the can sits next to the bowl and people apply the wrong rule to the wrong object.

FDA’s flood section opens: “Do not eat any food that may have come into contact with flood water.” Then the container rule: “Discard any food and beverage that is not in a waterproof container if there is any chance that it has come into contact with flood water.” Then the definitions, and the negation in the second one is the whole rule, so read it slowly. “Food containers that are waterproof include undamaged, commercially prepared foods in all-metal cans and “retort pouches” (like flexible, shelf-stable juice or seafood pouches).“ And: “Food containers that are not waterproof include those with screw-caps, snap lids, pull tops, and crimped caps.” Then: “Also discard cardboard juice/milk/baby formula boxes and home canned foods if they have come in contact with flood water, because they cannot be effectively cleaned and sanitized.”

Pull tops are on the not waterproof list. A pop-top pet food can is a pull top. That single line does more damage to a typical pet kit than anything else on this page, because pop-top cans are what preparedness lists tell people to pack.

FDA’s damaged-can definition, in full: “Discard any food in damaged cans. Damaged cans are those with swelling, leakage, punctures, holes, fractures, extensive deep rusting, or crushing/denting that is severe enough to prevent normal stacking or opening with a manual, wheel-type can opener.”

For the undamaged all-metal cans and retort pouches that do qualify, FDA publishes a reconditioning procedure: remove removable labels, brush or wipe away dirt or silt, wash with soap and water, rinse with drinking water, then sanitize by immersion either by boiling for two minutes or by soaking in a bleach solution, then “Air dry cans or retort pouches for a minimum of 1 hour before opening or storing”, re-label with the expiration date, and finally “Food in reconditioned cans or retort pouches should be used as soon as possible thereafter.” The air-dry step and the use-it-soon clause are the two most frequently dropped parts of that procedure and they are both load-bearing.

Now the boundary, stated plainly. That procedure is for undamaged commercially prepared food in all-metal cans and retort pouches. It does not extend to a nylon harness, a soft carrier, a bed, a collar, a toy, a leash or any other porous item, and this page does not extend it. Minnesota’s food line puts the same boundary in one sentence: “Discard items in soft packaging or screw-top glass bottles that may have touched floodwater or been in contact with contaminated material. Commercially canned goods in metal cans or rigid plastic can sometimes be saved.”

Bagged kibble, boxed treats and chews are the case people most want an exception for. FDA does not write one for pet food, because FDA’s flood page is human-food guidance that never uses the words pet food. What it does write is that cardboard boxes go “because they cannot be effectively cleaned and sanitized.” A paper or woven feed bag is at least as absorbent as a cardboard box, so we treat it the same way. That comparison is our reasoning, not an FDA finding about pet food, and the full version of that argument is on our pet food page rather than here.

Fire, Smoke and Ash Are a Different Sort

Everything above about the 24-to-48-hour window and porous absorption is written for water. Ash is a different contaminant with a different published handling, and the two most useful documents are one federal page about possessions and one county fact sheet about pets. They are separate documents and they say separate things.

EPA’s “Protect Yourself from Ash” page (last updated July 28, 2026) sets the hazard first: “Ash from burned structures in the wildland–urban interface generally contains more harmful chemicals than forest ash.” Its named list under “Other dangers” reads: “Asbestos, heavy metals, and cancer-causing chemicals: These include metals (lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium [total and hexavalent], copper, nickel, zinc), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs), dioxins, and furans.” That is the list. Do not add a substance to it and do not attach a concentration or a health threshold to anything on it.

Then the sorting instruction, under EPA’s own heading “Possessions”: “Decide which possessions can safely be cleaned and saved and which should be discarded. In general:” followed by “Furnishings with hard surfaces (e.g., ceramics, glass, wood, metal) and items that can be thoroughly washed (e.g., clothing, bedding, draperies) can be safely cleaned”, then “Upholstered furniture that is lightly soiled may be able to be cleaned”, then, and this bullet is part of the same list, “Consider seeking professional assistance if you find structural damage or hazardous materials, the HVAC system is impacted, or the scale of cleanup is more than you can manage on your own. Local authorities can recommend reputable specialists.”

Compare that with the flood tiers and something useful appears. For ash, a lightly soiled upholstered item is a maybe rather than a bin, because ash is a surface deposit and flood water is an immersion. That is the single biggest difference between the two events for your gear, and it is why a soft carrier that survived a fire has a path that the same carrier would not have after a flood.

EPA’s technique instructions are for surfaces, not for animals and not for coats: “Avoid dry sweeping or dusting. Never use a leaf blower. Before sweeping indoor and outdoor hard surfaces, mist them with water to keep dust down. Follow with wet mopping. Use a damp cloth or wet mop on lightly dusted areas. When you wet down ash, use as little water as you can.” On vacuums: “Use a HEPA vacuum, if available, to clean dusty surfaces. If you must use a typical household vacuum or shop vacuum, wear a respirator, air out the space, and use an air cleaner or HVAC filter while vacuuming to avoid breathing in any contaminants that the vacuum releases back into the air.”

Two more EPA lines belong here and each needs to stay attached to its own subject. “Thoroughly clean ash off all children’s toys before use” is about children’s toys. “Clean ash off pets and other animals and keep them away from contaminated sites” is about animals, and it is one sentence long with no method attached to it.

On disposal, EPA: “Collected ash may be disposed of in the regular trash. Ash should be stored in plastic bags or other containers to prevent it from being stirred up. If you suspect hazardous waste, including asbestos, is present, contact your local hazardous waste authorities regarding appropriate disposal. Avoid washing ash into storm drains.” If you suspect asbestos in the debris around your gear, that is a stop sign and a phone call to your local hazardous waste authority, not a bagging technique you learn from a web page.

The pet-facing half comes from Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Pet Safety Fact Sheet, and it is the closest thing in print to a pet-gear cleaning instruction: “Smoke residues, soot, and ash can cling to surfaces, so make sure your home is thoroughly cleaned before allowing pets to roam freely. Thoroughly clean floors, bedding, furniture, toys, and bowls for water and food before your pet uses them.” The same fact sheet adds a containment idea worth using while the rest of the house is still dirty: “Crates or exercise pens are useful to keep pets in recently cleaned or designated safe areas.” And on hazards you will be sorting through: “Be cautious of hazardous chemicals, including those used in firefighting, burned materials, or soot that may still be present in your home. Even small amounts of these substances can harm your pet if licked, eaten, or inhaled.”

On the food side, the county’s rule is short and does not need a temperature written in our voice: “Any food that has been exposed to smoke, heat or fire should be discarded. Refrigerated and frozen pet food should be discarded if the temperature rose above 40° Fahrenheit for two hours. Only provide fresh, safe food to your pets.” And on the outdoor bowl, which is the item most likely to be forgotten: “Do not allow pets to drink from puddles or water bowls that have been left outside. Feed pets indoors and do not put food or treats directly on the ground, use a bowl that can be washed and cleaned after use.”

If the smoke and air-quality side of the return is what you are actually facing, our wildfire smoke and pets guide works the AQI question, dog boots for wildfire ash and hot debris covers what goes on the paws walking through it, and returning home with pets after a disaster runs the property inspection that happens before any of this sorting starts.

What We Could Not Source, Stated Plainly

This is the section most pages on this topic skip, and it is the reason to trust the rest.

No agency publishes a discard-or-wash list for pet gear. We searched for one and did not find it. Searches for post-flood disposition guidance naming leashes, harnesses, carriers, beds and bowls returned retailer blogs, veterinary practice marketing posts and preparedness aggregators, none of which is an authority for a call like this. That is a statement about what our searching returned, not proof that no such document exists anywhere.

No source we opened publishes a rule for cat litter exposed to flood water. We searched state health department and federal guidance specifically for it. The litter rows above are our reasoning from Minnesota’s porous rule and Iowa’s solid-versus-absorbent split, and they are labelled as our call in the table. If your county health department publishes something more specific, that outranks this page. Our litter box options for shelter-in-place covers the supply side of the same problem.

No source we opened publishes a dilution, a concentration or a contact time for bathing an animal. NASAAEP’s own washing instruction is soap and water with warm water preferred for dogs, and diluted liquid soap or shampoo sprayed on for cats, with no ratio stated for either. The same document does publish one animal-applied number, and it is not a bathing instruction. NASAAEP’s Appendix D, the Canine Decontamination Equipment List, states: “If a biological hazard is suspected, walk the canine through a foot bath of dilute Clorox solution (0.5% sodium hypochlorite made by 1:10 dilution in water).” That figure is a walk-through foot bath rather than a wash, it is conditioned on a suspected biological hazard, and it sits inside a responder equipment list rather than a home procedure, in the same document that states elsewhere, “Only trained personnel should attempt to decontaminate any animal.” It is not published for a cat, it is not a bathing instruction, and it does not belong on a coat, skin, a wound or a soft carrier. The other numbers on this page are FDA’s for dishes and cans, and Iowa’s for a washing machine. None of those crosses to an animal either, and none of them should be converted, rounded or reused for anything else.

We could not reach cdc.gov directly. Requests to the relevant CDC cleanup pages returned HTTP 403 to both a plain fetch and a fetch tool, and an Internet Archive capture of one of them returned navigation without body text. That is a retrieval gap and not evidence CDC says nothing. Where this page needs the federal joint position, it quotes the version mirrored on epa.gov, which names CDC among the developing agencies, and says so at each quotation.

Nothing here makes anything safe. None of the documents quoted on this page describes an item as decontaminated, sterile or safe after a home cleaning, and we are not going to be the first. What they describe is a cleaning procedure and the conditions attached to it. If your animal shows any sign of illness after coming back to cleaned gear, that is a veterinary call, and the ASPCA Animal Poison Control line at (888) 426-4435 exists for the poisoning version of that question, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with the note that a consultation fee may apply.

The Sorting Checklist

Run this in order. The order matters, because the cheapest tests eliminate the most items.

• Put on what the hazard calls for before you start, and check the exclusion list first. The mold guide keeps people with asthma or weakened immune systems away from moldy sites and keeps children out of disaster cleanup entirely; EPA’s ash page separately keeps people with heart or lung disease, older adults and pregnant women out of ash cleanup.
• Do not put any respirator on the animal. Los Angeles County Public Health publishes that instruction and its reasons in one sentence.
• Sort the animal off the site first. This is a sorting task, not a supervised-play task, and the animal has no business in the pile.
• Rule one, applied to everything at once: broken, torn, splintered, cracked, dented, chewed or frayed goes out immediately. That single pass will empty most of a used pet kit.
• Split what is left into hard and soft. Hard means the surface is the whole item. Soft means there is an inside you cannot inspect.
• Hard items: check they are structurally sound, then wash. Crates, wire pens, litter pans, stainless and ceramic bowls, hard toys, buckles and metal tags.
• Soft items with a removable cover: launder the cover, bin the fill.
• Soft items without a removable cover, after flood water: bin them. If one is genuinely irreplaceable, the mold guide points you to Smithsonian Institute preservation guidance rather than to a home method.
• After a fire rather than a flood, re-run the soft items once. EPA treats lightly soiled upholstery as a maybe for ash, which flood immersion does not allow.
• Do not mix cleaning products. Bleach and ammonia is the pairing both EPA documents name.
• If you bleach anything the animal touches, rinse it thoroughly and wait for the bleach odor to dissipate before the animal is back around it. That is ASPCA’s condition and all three parts of it apply.
• Keep the dryer sheets and the fabric softener out of the pet laundry. ASPCA names cationic detergents in both.
• Photograph anything you have to discard that carries information: the collar with its tags, the medication bottle label, the paper vaccination certificate. NASAAEP names photographing and copying as the fallback for items that cannot be decontaminated.
• Food and medication get discarded on their own rules, not on the gear rules. Read the food page before you decide anything about a can, a bag or a pouch.
• If you suspect asbestos or hazardous waste in the debris, stop and call your local hazardous waste authority. EPA routes that question there and so do we.
• Shower and change clothes when you leave a mold site, so you are not carrying it back to wherever you are sleeping.
• Write the replacement list as you go, in the same pass. You will not remember at midnight what came out of the pile.

Rebuilding the Kit, and What It Should Look Like This Time

The replacement list you just wrote is the most valuable thing to come out of a bad afternoon, because it is an inventory of your actual kit rather than an idealized one. Two things are worth changing while you rebuild.

The first is material. This page’s whole argument is that hard, non-absorbent gear survives contamination events and soft, padded gear does not. That is not an argument for throwing out your soft carrier, which exists for reasons that have nothing to do with floods. It is an argument for knowing, before the event, which half of your kit is disposable in a contamination scenario, so the loss is a line on a list rather than a decision made while exhausted. Our pet evacuation kits hub and the kit builder tool both give you a place to record that split.

The second is duplication. A collar with tags, a leash and a bowl are cheap to duplicate and catastrophic to be without, and they are exactly the items NASAAEP’s professionals treat as probable waste. A spare set stored somewhere the event will not reach is the difference between an inconvenience and a household that cannot walk its dog. If the animal went missing during the event and the collar is what is left, our find a lost pet after a disaster guide is the next page rather than this one.

And the third thing, which is not a purchase. Read the rows above once more and note which ones said “our call”. Those are the places where you should ask your veterinarian or your county health department rather than trusting a table, because those are the places where the published record ran out and reasoning took over. A page that tells you where its own evidence ends is more useful than one that sounds certain the whole way down.

Where to Go Next

This page is the contamination-triage spoke of our pet evacuation kits hub. The rest of the post-disaster problem splits three ways.

Before you sort anything. Returning home with pets after a disaster runs the property hazard sequence before the animal leaves the vehicle, which is the step this page assumes you have already done.

The food half. Is pet food safe after a flood or a power outage owns the container rules, the two bleach strengths FDA publishes for cans, the aflatoxin problem and the outage clock. Read it before you decide anything about a can, a bag or a refrigerated food.

The hazard-specific half. Flood and flash-flood pet preparedness sets the pre-event side of a flood, wildfire smoke and pets works the air quality question, and dog boots for wildfire ash and hot debris covers the ground the animal has to cross afterward.

Rebuilding. The pet emergency kit rotation checklist is the calendar version of kit maintenance once you have a kit again, and waterproof pet document kits covers the records that should never have been on paper in a wet garage in the first place.

Then do one small thing this week that costs nothing. Walk your kit and label each item hard or soft in your own head. Hard means you will probably be washing it. Soft means you will probably be replacing it. That single sort, done on a quiet afternoon, is the whole of this page compressed into two words, and it is the version you will actually remember when you are standing in front of the pile.