Dogs May Help 'Sniff Out' Pollution - cool story

[baby_bear]

I am biased because I work on vapor intrusion, but I also love dogs and want this one!

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=2327EB50-5128-4CC3-944257F2058714C5#



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Dogs have an incredible sense of smell and because of it they have become a valuable resource alongside police and military officers and in search and rescue missions. Now, a research laboratory in Athens, Georgia is exploring the use of dogs to detect pollution in homes and commercial buildings.

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"If you look at a dog, the dog actually has an extra organ in its nose that is a scent detection organ," she said. "It has thousands more scent receptors than we do. If you look at just the size of their nose, inside, it's lined with olfactory receptors. When they are sampling they don't just breathe in and out, they actually have a sampling burst: sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff and they take it into their nose cavity. And, then they also have a purge breath where they clean their nose out. So they clear it back out so they can sample again."

Sandra Bird, who trains dogs in her free time, brought Sammy into her work at the National Exposure Research laboratory in Athens, Georgia about a year ago. At a scientific meeting in Washington, she puts the dog through his paces: she fills glass jars with either water or a very weak solution of rubbing alcohol and places the jars into three separate wooden boxes. Sammy is charged with finding the jar that has the diluted chemical.
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more...

It's a great read. Why don't I have a job like that? (Ms. Bird's, not Sammy's)
:P

s_m