Detection dogs can be uncannily good at finding things from scent. For me at least, the first jobs that come to mind are law enforcement related; cadaver dogs, drug dogs, or dogs trained to detect explosive compounds (and the various problems and abuses associated with these dogs' jobs) - but dogs are finding work finding all kinds of other stuff too! I was recently looking up examples of detection dogs searching for toxic waste for a fiction project and thought I'd share some exerpts from the articles I found:
https://www.washington.edu/boundless/conservation-canines/
Jasper is part of a new approach: He’s helping Seattle Public Utilities identify possible sources of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PCBs, toxic chemicals once found in everything from electrical transformers to caulking, are said to have no known smell, but Jeffers often detected a sweet, chlorinated scent. He wondered if a dog could do the same — and possibly at lower levels of concentration.
When Jasper sits in front of a cheerful yellow storefront in Ballard, shoulders upright and hips square to the ground, he’s telling Ubigau he has identified PCBs. But he gets his reward — that coveted ball — only if he’s right.
Standing a few feet away in bright orange jackets, a trio of inspectors from SPU’s Source Control and Pollution Prevention Division check the address against a list. They’ve mapped out suspected sources of PCBs in the area, but they want Jasper to verify. Neither the handler nor the dog knows the targets in advance.
“Reward him,” SPU lead inspector Jeffers says to Ubigau. Jasper’s nose has led him straight to a target.
“Our goal was to see if we could train a detection dog to smell PCBs, and at what level,” says Jeffers about the successful pilot study. Since then, SPU and Conservation Canines have done about nine surveys, primarily along the Lower Duwamish Waterway — a designated EPA Superfund site, where PCBs from old industrial sources may have seeped into the ground or river.
When Jasper detects PCBs, as he does on this day in Ballard, SPU coordinates with the property owner and state and federal agencies to clean up the site. The trained dogs often go beyond the call of duty by detecting previously unknown sources, making them an integral part of the fight to remove harmful chemicals from the environment.
https://www.wsp.com/en-us/insights/meet-louie-wsps-newest-four-legged-pollution-detective
Meet Louie [...] this former explosive detection dog is now trained with one specific task in mind: finding the sources of chlorinated solvents that are wasted or improperly disposed of in natural and built environments.
he might possibly be the first pollution detection dog in the world trained to detect chlorinated solvents—chemical compounds that are readily used for commercial and industrial purposes, including metal cleaners/degreasers, paint thinners, pesticides, glues, and dry cleaning applications. When handled, stored and disposed of improperly, these compounds and their waste can release vapours into the air, seep into soils and groundwater and even end up in homes or workplaces, potentially posing environmental or health risks.
“As chlorinated solvents are often invisible, they can be located using traditional methods such as photoionization (PID) detectors, a sensor tool that screens for the presence of gases, reads volatile organic compounds (VOCs) concentration levels, indicating too-high levels, but not necessarily by product type,” says Mette.
This is where Louie steps in with his acute sense of smell, working on all types of projects to find the sources of chlorinated solvents in surface water, groundwater, soil and air. His ability to smell and react on the smallest concentrations of chlorinated solvents is truly extraordinary, something that would be quite impossible to do using other tools.
For example, instead of drilling in different spots to search for pollution, through his keen sense of smell he can determine the spot that will be most successful for drilling. Furthermore, Louie can even find the sources of polluted water or toxic gases within a building, if built on a polluted plot.
There is a myriad of other benefits. With the use of Louie’s nose, sources of pollution can cover more space, in less time and with more accuracy.
For skeptics out there, consider the following. Mette recounted a story about working on a project where the client’s house was contaminated. Before the house would be taken down, the client requested that photos be taken and suggested taking them from the garden. As the client, Mette and Louie walked through the garden, Louie went through his detection motions, making a mark on the grass. Though surprised, the client was adamant that his garden was not polluted. But Mette knew better. When the bulldozer arrived the following week, it never had a chance to reach the house. The ground gave way in the garden, swallowing the bulldozer and exposing a well that was contaminated with chlorinated solvents at the spot where Louie had pointed out.
“In other cases,” Mette adds “we’ve found exposure in parts of houses that weren’t flagged by traditional methods.” In all evidence, she says that “we actually get better site investigations when we add in this sniffer dog method. And, this is very important when we must do remediation, we have all possible sources for this indoor problem to consider.”
https://aegisenvironmentalinc.com/commercial/site-investigation-scent-dog/
Like dogs trained to locate chemical traces of accelerants for arson investigations, our scent dog, Piper, is trained to detect traces of petroleum such as crude oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline. It is estimated that dogs can detect scents 40 feet underground. When petroleum is found in numerous locations, Piper is trained to pinpoint the area where petroleum concentration is greatest.
Piper’s handler will draw upon his experience to develop a search plan, giving Piper the best opportunity to locate the desired odors. When, or if, anything of interest is found, the area is marked, and the appropriate professionals will take over. Dogs can detect trace amounts of materials, which would be almost impossible to find using other means. Piper is a valuable and unique asset trained to help site investigators locate the area where contamination is present. Ultimately it is up to the investigator to ensure the information provided by Piper’s search is valid and used in a valuable way.
There's also a ton of examples of detection dogs being trained to find invasive species.
Semi related, from the first article:
In a pilot study funded by the Department of Homeland Security, the dogs are being trained to detect minuscule traces of illegal timber in vacuumed air samples from shipping containers.
“The beauty of this method is that we can search hundreds of containers really quickly, and we don’t even have to take them off the line,” Wasser says, noting that it could be a powerful tool for both law enforcement and conservationists concerned about habitat loss.
