AVOIDING HIDDEN DANGERS OF METH LABS

NAUVOO, Ill. -- Methamphetamine isn't just a dangerous drug. It's a
dangerous chemical.

Firefighters, ambulance crew members and township road commissioners
got a lesson in the illegal stimulant's dangers Thursday through a
class aimed at showing the drug's risks to those outside law
enforcement.

"We have to share information with you to keep you from becoming
victims," said Illinois State Police Sgt. Mike Inman, a certified
meth lab safety officer and lead investigator with the West Central
Illinois Task Force.

The class was a first for the Nauvoo Fire Department, but one of
several training sessions Inman has presented to local police and
fire departments, paramedics and first responders.

Firefighters or ambulance crews may well be the first on the scene
when meth production goes wrong, Inman said. And while the
ingredients would be dangerous in the hands of anyone, they become
more so in the hands of the kinds of people cooking meth.

"The people who are involved in this culture are not well educated,
but they're doing things that are complex chemistry," he said.

There are two different recipes out there, one of which involves
large amounts of red phosphorous -- a chemical that's hard for most
ordinary people to get in quantities sufficient for producing meth.

The other uses anhydrous ammonia, a common farm fertilizer.

That's the method used nearly exclusively by meth cooks in downstate
Illinois, Inman said.

Cocaine remains king in Chicago and its suburbs, he said.

When he goes to drug enforcement conferences, Inman said officers
from urban areas sometimes don't understand the meth issue.

"They don't know what meth is," he said. "They don't have it. They
don't have the necessary ingredients."

Once a meth cook has the anhydrous ammonia, Inman said, the rest of
the materials can be obtained at just about any discount store.

For an investment of about $100 and two hours of time, a meth cook
can create 28 grams of the drug -- street value of about $2,800.

Inman travels with a green plastic storage tub. He opens it, and
inside is almost everything needed to make an ounce of the drug --
only the anhydrous ammonia has been left out.

The main ingredient in meth is psuedoephedrine -- the stuff in over-
the-counter medicines Actifed and Sudafed that stops the sniffles.

But while directions on the package say not to take more than eight
pills in 24 hours, meth cooks will use about 1,000 pills as they
distill the psuedoephedrine and chemically change it to
methamphetamine.

The pills usually come in blister packs -- plastic bubbles with a
foil covering to hold the medicine.

Inman said firefighters and ambulance crew members who see the
telltale packaging on calls should be aware.

"Start looking for things that will tell you 'I better be careful
where I go here,' " he said.

Meth cooks "wash" the pills using methyl alcohol -- easily available
in the fuel additive Heet. They'll pass the mixture through a filter,
like those used with drip coffee makers.

What passes through the filter gets chemically altered by a process
involving the anhydrous ammonia and a sodium metal. Inman said the
lithium that comes in camera batteries works nicely.

Lithium reacts violently with water -- making it vital for
firefighters to recognize the signs of a meth lab when they arrive at
a scene.

Inman tells the story of a California man who dropped a coil of used
lithium into a jar of water, creating an explosion that destroyed his
apartment building and pushed lithium shrapnel deep into his body.

Another man was out front watering the flowers as the burning,
bleeding man fled the building. Inman said he did what would come
natural to most people -- he turned the hose on him to put out the
flames.

Instead of helping, the water triggered more reactions inside the
man's already gaping wounds.

Anhydrous ammonia is also explosive in certain concentrations. Its
vapors are a deadly poison. Not to mention, Inman said, that tanks
used to hold the substance keep it at about 44 degrees below zero.

"We are seeing people get injured," he said.

Farm supply stores don't sell the kind of small quantities meth cooks
need, he said.

So they find ways of carrying the highly corrosive chemical in other
containers.

One man caught near Bowen, Ill., put the stuff in an old Nestea jar.

Inman said the man clearly did not understand the danger in what he was doing.

"I had to drive with it out the window because it stunk so bad,"
Inman remembers the man having said.

After the reaction, a meth cook will need a solvent. Camp stove fuel
and engine starting fluid are both popular options, Inman said, and
both carry their own risks.

"If you've got the slightest ignition source, you get an explosion," he said.

Finally, a meth cook will create a kind of chemical snow to get the
ingredients to separate and leave a pure form of the drug behind.

Muriatic acid, used to clean concrete, can produce that reaction. So
can sulfuric acid, used in heavy-duty drain cleaners.

Both are highly toxic, Inman said, and are rarely used in anything
more sturdy than a plastic gasoline can or an old Gatorade bottle.

Worse yet, he said, the snow is made by mixing the chemicals with salt.

"The minute they start combining, they start generating a poisonous
gas," he said.

In concentrations as small as 50 parts per million, the gas is risky
to be around. At about 1,500 parts per million, it is fatal.

Army gas masks do not hold up to the acid, Inman said. Surgical masks
do not even slow it down.

And when a meth cook goes down from a recipe gone wrong, he said,
they'll likely call for the fire department or an ambulance.

"When you start smelling rotten eggs, get the hell out of there,"
Inman said. "If you stay in that environment, you will be another
victim."

Time does little to make the chemicals less dangerous, Inman said.

Officials in McDonough County, Ill., found a gasoline can full of the
acid mixture at a rural cemetery. An account from an area resident
indicated it had been there for about two months.

Having so much time to settle, they reasoned, there was no need to
call in a state meth lab cleanup team. They poured the stuff out in
the middle of a road.

"For the next 45 minutes we watched that acid eat up that gravel," Inman said.

Don't trust what you see, Inman said.

Authorities caught a couple of meth cooks in southern Hancock County
with used ether in a two-litre soda bottle. It looked like an
ordinary bottle of pop, but it wasn't.

Inman asked the firefighters to imagine what would have happened if
their car had crashed.

If the explosive ether had spilled, and if rescue workers had needed
to cut the victims out, Inman said the resulting sparks could have
created a deadly explosion.

While much of the talk was aimed at emergency responders, Inman had a
special message for those who maintain rural roads.

"This stuff is going to be discarded along the public right of way,"
he said. "Don't mess with it. Don't touch it and say, 'Oh, I wonder
what this is.' "

Last fall a Henderson County, Ill., farmer was hurt when he picked up
what appeared to be a forgotten fuel can and opened it to see if it
was diesel or gasoline, Inman said.

"He spent the next three days in Burlington Medical Center," he said.

Steve Salrin, Nauvoo fire chief, said his department hasn't rolled up
on a meth lab yet. But there's likely to be a day when they will.

"We've got a responsibility to our guys," he said. "I don't want to
be naive and assume it's not around."

Vicki Gallagher, paramedic coordinator with the Air Evac team at
Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Ill., has gone to a call and found a
meth lab before.

It happened to her while she still worked for Lee County EMS several
years ago, she said.

"As we rolled up on it and there was a huge fire with several people
injured," she said.

Hancock County joined the multi-agency enforcement group after the
election of Sheriff John Jefferson in 1998.

Since then, several meth labs have been discovered in the area.

Authorities arrested a St. Louis man in February 2000 found running a
meth lab out of a cardboard box in a Niota, Ill., mobile home.

The next month police officers, deputies and task force agents raided
a lab in a Hamilton, Ill., home after getting a tip someone there was
about to start cooking the drug.

Numerous others in the area have been arrested on methamphetamine-
related charges since that time, Inman said.