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USING CANINES IN SOURCE DETECTION OF INDOOR AIR POLLUTANTS
Citation:
Bird, S L. USING CANINES IN SOURCE DETECTION OF INDOOR AIR POLLUTANTS. Presented at Indoor Air Quality Problems and Engineering Solutions Symposium, Research Triangle Park, NC, July 21-23, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
The objective of this task is to evaluate and demonstrate the potential for use of dogs as screening detectors for pollutants, analyze the utility and cost effectiveness of a canine corps for a range of environmental applications, and develop initial guidance for use of canines in environmental detection.
Description:
Dogs have been used extensively in law enforcement and military applications to detect narcotics and explosives for over thirty years. Dogs are regularly used in arson investigations to detect accelerants since they are much more accurate at discriminating between accelerants and by-products of combustion than field VOC detectors. Controlled laboratory studies have documented accurate detection by dogs of specific compounds associated with explosives and narcotics at air concentrations below 1 ppb. Relatively few applications have taken advantage of this canine capability in the environmental arena. Dogs could be used to rapidly screen houses for problems such as vapor intrusion of a variety of VOCs, identifying the presence of mildews and toxic molds, or rapidly identifying houses where illicit pesticide use has occurred. Dogs can serve as a rapid screen to indicate the presence of a substance in air in a house and are also capable of moving towards the source of volatile materials. Benzene, toluene, ethylene, and xylene (BTEX) are major constituents of gasoline and frequent culprits in vapor intrusion into buildings from contaminated groundwater. Since indoor air contamination can also occur from household sources responsibility is often contested. This presentation demonstrates the use of dogs to signal the presence of the BTEX suite of compounds and the ability of the canines to move to the source of contamination.