Hometown News
Local dog has nose for mold
Posted: 2006 Mar 09 – 23:30
PALM BAY – Emma isn’t just your run-of-the-puppy-mill dog.
The 1-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever is one of a new breed of specially trained dogs, which use their elevated sense of smell to expose risks not visible to the human eye. These special skills have been utilized by experts for everything, from rescuing people to finding drugs and bombs, and even diagnosing cancer. But Emma’s specialty is sniffing out dangerous mold.
Randy Tkacs, owner and operator of AAA-1 Home Inspection and Mold Service, rescued Emma from the pound and then enrolled her in a specialized dog training school in Alabama. The facility trains the animals to sniff out specialized threats or perform other tasks. He is now the only mold inspector to utilize canine olfactory senses in Brevard County.
“Human beings smell odors in parts per hundred, whereas dogs smell odors in parts per trillion,” Mr. Tkacs said. “Emma can tell within an accuracy of 96.9 percent if and where house mold exists in your house. Then I can tell you how to fix it.”
He said these “mold dogs” are trained to discriminate the scents of various types of microbial colonies in a variety of structures, even attics and crawl spaces. If a dog finds mold in a structure, he indicates the discovery by sitting down.
Mr. Tkacs, a certified home inspector and mold specialist, said Emma received more than 600 hours of training by Alabama canine specialist David L. Latimer. He and Emma also trained together as a team for more than 40 hours.
At the end of the course, a certified Master Trainer verifies that he and the other 40 to 50 mold dogs that operate around the United States are capable of discriminating mold scents.
“Emma and I are very close,” Mr. Tkacs said. “I spend more time with Emma than I do with my wife. This is what we do; we work together as a team.”
Before becoming a mold inspector, Mr. Tkacs spent more than 20 years teaching health and English classes in the public school system in the Florida Keys.
He said he felt it was time to make a change in careers when he read about the hazards of mold and how it was affecting people’s lives.
“As a former health teacher, I thought the issue sounded like one people will be dealing with for a long time,” Mr. Tkacs said. “Since the hurricanes of 2004, so many people in the area have health issues that might be the result of mold growing in their homes.”
Sometime later, he read a report about dogs being trained to find mold.
“Is there a bigger problem for homeowners in the area? If there is, I haven’t heard of it yet,” Mr. Tkacs said. “I said, ‘Why not get a dog to help me nail down where the mold is?’ Guess what, we’re doing it now.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, dangerous molds can grow on almost anything including, wood, leather, sheet rock, structural insulation and food, as long as moist conditions exist. People are exposed to molds either by direct contact or through the air.
The agency also says that all molds have the potential to cause health effects. Some molds can cause allergic reactions and have been implicated in asthma attacks. Others are known to produce potent toxins and irritants. Some of the mold particles are so small that humans can inhale the material directly into the lung’s alveoli, leading to potentially toxic respiratory effects.
While the E.P.A. has noted that mold can be a health hazard, it has never set standards as to how much mold is safe in homes or businesses. Mr. Tkacs believes that if such standards were set, the government would potentially have to pay for massive mold remediation expenses in its facilities. He said the expense might be similar to the massive clean-up jobs that were required when asbestos, a popular insulation material, was found to cause cancer.
“If Emma walks into your house and sits down, you have a mold issue,” Mr. Tkacs said. “If you’ve been feeling ill at your home, mold could be responsible. Cleaning it will definitely improve your life.”
He said that if your home is found to have mold problems, by law, you must have the problem fixed or advertise the home as having mold before it can be sold.
Mr. Tkacs said he offers Emma’s services for free to any Brevard Public Schools, but he doesn’t expect much response.
“Schools don’t want to touch this problem with a 10-foot-pole,” he said. “The cost to the schools could be a lot more than money. It could be the health of the county’s schoolchildren.”
For more information contact Mr. Tkacs at (321) 652-4448 or e-mail him at www.keyshomeinspection.com.
