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POLLUTION DETECTION DOGS: PROOF OF CONCEPT
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. Dogs are regularly used by the real estate industry to detect termites in houses. Controlled laboratory studies have documented accurate detection by dogs of specific compounds associated with explosives and narcotics at air concentrations in the 1 ppb range. The sensitivity and discrimination of canine olfactory senses has been demonstrated in other arenas including the accurate detection of skin cancer in a medical research application. Generally, the only compounds that dogs have difficulty identifying are those that are naturally ubiquitous in the environment - its difficult to train a response to compounds that dogs are constantly exposed to. Relatively few applications have taken advantage of this canine capability in the environmental arena. Dogs have been used to detect leaks in natural gas pipelines and in Australia a dog is used in rural areas to detect organochlorines in soils to target site cleanup. In Sweden, dogs are used to detect mildew in houses and to screen plumbing fixtures in schools and health care institutions for mercury.
The unique olfactory capabilities of canines present many possibilities for use by EPA in including indoor air quality monitoring, waste site identification, waste site delineation and characterization, and source identification. 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 not only serve as a rapid screen to indicate the presence of a substance in air in a house but also are capable of moving towards the source of volatile materials. A dog could be indicate the presence of a contaminant in the air and differentiate between an exterior and interior source. Dogs could be efficiently used to locate pollutant sources in the landscape. Since a dog is essentially a continuous sampler, large areas could be surveyed rapidly. The use of dogs as a screening tool would both reduce the amount of sampling required and reduce the possibility of missing hot spots in a heterogeneous environment. Dogs might be used to screen both imported and domestic fruits and vegetables for residues of banned pesticides.
Since dogs have been used for detection of substances in law enforcement for many years, the initial efforts are not centered on development of new techniques but rather on assessing the practical feasibility for applications of potential interest to EPA and doing cost benefit and hazard assessment issues compared to other technologies available to do the same task. A proof of concept demonstration and comparison with current state of the art chemical screening and detection methods is proposed as an initial step. This project will be initiated as an in-house research effort. A dog for pollution detection will be trained on an initial suite of demonstration compounds. Since a dog can be trained to signal a large number of compounds, this demonstration animal can be used in a variety of demonstration applications. An experienced detection dog can be trained to new compounds in a one - two weeks or less. ORD researchers will work with Regional field personnel on developing demonstration applications.