Chinese Drywall: Here doggy, doggy!
September 11th, 2009. By AbiK
There was an article in the Palm Beach Post earlier in the week about…what else? Chinese drywall! Well, you can’t blame the folks in Palm Beach and Broward Counties—it’s a daily nuisance (or worse) they have to live with. But, they might be getting some help—from dogs.
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of getting “frisked” by some gnarling, ferocious dogs as you’re tooling through customs in Miami International Airport, you know what dogs are capable of sniffing out. So I’m all for this one.
According to the Palm Beach Post article, defective Chinese drywall can be difficult to locate with real accuracy—and air quality tests don’t necessarily register high levels of sulfur. That one stopped me cold: all the hoopla about “professional” testing of homes for Chinese drywall to date has pretty much focused on air quality tests—and they may not necessarily detect it?
Give it to the dogs!
The article goes on to quote American K-9 president, Mark Mahler, as saying “The more I read about Chinese drywall, the more I’m committed to getting some dogs trained and get them out there to help.” He also noted that dog training could begin in a matter of weeks.
Another little tidbit from Mahler: Dogs’ sense of smell is up to 40x stronger than humans. While humans have about 5 million olfactory cells, dogs average 220 to 250.
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Actually there are extremely accurate tests (nothing even siilar to an “air quality test”) which can be performed rather affordably. The off-gassing from even lightly tainted drywall can be detected in a short, simple, CSI type in the laboratory test. There is a company in Marietta, Georgia really opening this up to inspectors, remediators, attorneys, lenders and others. I do not work for them but I have done some spot work for them. These gasses are dangerous so no telling what kind of damage sulfuric emissions will do to a poor dog’s scent glands and respiratory system!
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