BOCA RATON, Fla. — Coming soon, another tool for homeowners worried they may be plagued with defective Chinese drywall: drywall-sniffing dogs.
Dogs and their keen sense of smell have been used for some time to help aid in ferreting out narcotics, explosives — even bedbugs, mold and forged money.
Now some Florida experts, led by an associate director at Florida Atlantic University, are questioning whether these canines can be used to uncover the defective drywall in homes and buildings.
"It seems to me that here is a way to detect the presence of reactive drywall in a non-destructive and more cost-effective way," said Gene Ouellette, associate director of FAU's Institute for Design and Construction, who came up with the idea to investigate whether dogs could be trained to spot bad drywall.
Some drywall imported from China between 2000 and 2008 releases sulfuric fumes linked to the corrosion of metal components in homes, and is blamed by a growing number of homeowners for health problems such as nosebleeds, headaches and respiratory issues.
The defective wallboard is difficult to pinpoint accurately. Air quality tests often don't register high levels of sulfur. And composition tests of the drywall require cutting out a piece of the wall.
Instead, homeowners must usually rely on characteristic markers to see if the walls in their home are problematic, such as evidence of corrosion, markings on the back of the drywall — or sulfuric odors.
"The nose is the best instrument out there for detecting hydrogen sulfide," said Holly Bailey, a certified indoor air quality professional and a member of the South Florida coalition that has created a proposed protocol for tainted drywall removal.
"It used to be the canary for the mine. We need some sort of sulfur dog that can smell the sulfur and say whether it's safe or not," she said.
And that's exactly what Lake Mary, Fla.-based American K-9 Detection Services is looking into.
The company, which was approached by FAU's Ouellette, said it is working on getting samples of defective and regular drywall to develop a protocol and train the dogs.
"The more I read about Chinese drywall, the more I'm committed to getting some dogs trained and get them out there to help," said Mark Mahler, American K-9's president. He said that training of the dogs could begin in a matter of weeks.
Mahler said dogs' sense of smell is up to 40 times stronger than that of humans. While humans have about 5 million olfactory cells, dogs average 220 to 250.
"You can train dogs to detect nearly anything," said Dr. Kenneth Furton, a professor at Florida International University who has been doing canine detection studies for 20 years. "The sense of smell of a dog is really exceptional, but what is even more remarkable is their selectivity."
Furton said he hasn't done any specific work with training dogs to sniff out defective drywall, but said that it's "a great idea that I hope gets picked up on."
Allison Ross writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: allison(underscore)ross(at)pbpost.com.