Faculty of Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe St N., Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada.
J Chromatogr A. 2012 Sep 14;1255:202-6. doi: 10.1016/j.chroma.2012.04.001. Epub 2012 Apr 10.
Cadaver dogs are trained on a variety of materials, including artificial or pseudo scents. The chemical components of commercially available pseudo scents are not known, so their accuracy as a decomposition odour mimic and their effectiveness as a canine training aid have not been evaluated. Two pseudo scents that are commercially available and used for training cadaver dogs were analysed using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-time of flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS). The two formulations were determined to be simplistic in their composition, compared to real cadaveric volatile organic compound (VOC) mixtures, with only a few major components. The enhanced GC×GC-TOFMS peak capacity was nevertheless useful to discriminate less intense peaks from large overloaded peaks. The availability of both dimension retention times combined with the peak finding and deconvolution algorithm, enabled the chemical characterization of the two formulations. Additionally, high resolution (HR) TOFMS was used to extract molecular formulae and confirm identities of analytes. The seven compounds identified by this work have not been reported previously as volatile products of decomposition, indicating that these pseudo scents are not to be considered as an accurate representation of cadaveric decomposition odour. Further research on the olfaction of scent detection canines and the chemical composition of their target odourants needs to be conducted to develop improved canine training aids.
尸臭探测犬接受各种材料的训练，包括人工或假性气味。市售假性气味的化学成分未知，因此它们作为分解气味模拟物的准确性以及作为犬类训练辅助工具的有效性尚未得到评估。本研究使用全二维气相色谱-飞行时间质谱（GC×GC-TOFMS）分析了两种市售且用于训练尸臭探测犬的假性气味。与真实的尸体挥发性有机化合物（VOC）混合物相比，这两种配方的组成相对简单，只有少数主要成分。尽管如此，增强的 GC×GC-TOFMS 峰容量仍有助于区分较弱的峰和较大的过载峰。两个维度的保留时间以及峰的查找和去卷积算法的可用性，使这两种配方的化学特征得以确定。此外，高分辨率（HR）TOFMS 用于提取分子公式并确认分析物的身份。通过这项工作鉴定出的七种化合物以前没有报道过是分解的挥发性产物，这表明这些假性气味不能被视为尸体分解气味的准确代表。需要进一步研究气味探测犬的嗅觉和它们目标气味剂的化学组成，以开发改进的犬类训练辅助工具。
