THE TEEN STALKER BENEATH THE SINK

It's a lesson learned but not learned: Huffing can kill.Two years ago,
huffing - inhaling chemicals from aerosol spray cans - caused a car crash
in which five Delaware County teenagers died.On Friday, the Chester County
coroner ruled that Morgan Kelly, 17, of Berwyn, who died when her car hit a
tree on Feb. 3, had inhaled aerosol fumes moments before the crash and
probably lost consciousness.What young people don't know about the dangers
of inhalants is killing them, according to bereft parents as well as
coroners and substance-abuse experts."Kids don't have the image that [an
inhalant] is illegal or harmful to them," Chester County coroner Rodger
Rothenberger said Friday."You can go out and get it at the store, so that
means it can't be that bad, or they'd take it off market.

It doesn't last a long time, so it must be one of those quick thrills that
must be all right."Parents and educators also seem not to recognize the
dangers."I probably talk to 100 families per year whose children have died
as a direct result of inhalant abuse," said Harvey Weiss, executive
director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition in Austin,
Texas.Time and again, he said, he hears parents say, "I never dreamt my
child would do this stuff."The typical user, Weiss said, is white,
suburban, middle class and female.

Inhalant use starts in the preteen years, although Weiss is tracking a
recent increase in the illegal use of nitrous oxide among older teens and
people in their 20s.Two nitrous-oxide deaths were reported recently in
South Jersey - that of a 16-year-old girl in Bordentown and that of a
23-year-old man in Audubon.Weiss said his organization received 2,500 phone
calls - most of them from the Philadelphia area - two years ago after
huffing was cited in the deadly Chester Heights car crash.The trouble with
inhalants is that they are ubiquitous, as common as cans of whipped cream,
air freshener, and computer-keyboard cleaner, the product blamed in Kelly's
death and in those of the five Penncrest High School girls."It's the stuff
under the kitchen sink," said Anne Rickards of Essington, Delaware County,
whose son, Joey, 14, was found dead in the town park in January 1995, a
butane canister in his hand.The boy's father had warned him of the dangers
of inhaling, and after Joey's death, Anne Rickards held workshops to carry
the message to other children.She said young people need to be warned."It's
all the stuff we worried about when they were toddlers, when we would say,
'No, get away from that,' stuff we thought they would swallow.

Well, the spray can also kill them as teenagers."Gail Bustaque of Leola,
Pa., found her son, Freddy Jr., 16, dead in his room, a can of air
freshener nearby, six years ago."I don't think my son thought he was doing
anything dangerous," Bustaque said Friday. "It wasn't illegal.

It was air freshener that you could buy at the market."Weiss thinks
inhalants should be regarded as poisons."Parents feel more comfortable
speaking about poisons than about drugs," he said, and the danger of
poisoning is "a message that young people can comprehend at a very young
age."In Texas, that approach has had an impact: Inhalant use there has
declined 50 percent over the last two years, Weiss said.National data,
however, are hard to come by. Since July 1996, nearly 700 deaths have been
reported to Weiss' group.A study conducted two years ago by the U.S.
Consumer Product Safety Commission found that one in five teenagers
nationwide admitted to having used inhalants to get high by the time he or
she had left high school."But the main news is that there is a huge
disparity between what parents think the kids are doing and what they are
actually doing," said Ken Giles, a spokesman for the commission.In the same
study, 95 percent of parents said they did not think their children had
used inhalants.The Federal Hazardous Substances Act requires labels on most
household cleaning products warning of the potential harm of inhaling
chemicals.

The law applies to cans of compressed air containing difluroethane, Giles
said.At Rubenstein's Office Supplies in West Chester, owner Michael
Rubenstein said the store sells about five cans of compressed air a month.

He said he first heard about teens' inhaling the air two years ago - when
huffing was linked to the death of the five girls."I don't think there is
anything that can be done about it," he said. "At some point, people just
have to be responsible for what they do."Rubenstein said most of the cans
his store sells are delivered directly to businesses in the area. He has
recently begun keeping only four or five on the shelf at a time, to limit
availability and to help curb shoplifting, he said.One of the more
aggressive policies is at Pep Boys stores, where clerks are required to
check the ID of any customer trying to buy such chemicals as paint thinner,
spray paint and urethane.Computerized cash registers require clerks to
enter customers' driver's-license number before completing such sales."That
is partially to cut down on graffiti," said Brian McDaid, a manager of the
West Chester Pep Boys store, "and partially to prevent kids looking to
inhale the fumes." Staples, which has 31 stores in the Philadelphia area,
carries Duster II, the brand linked to both car crashes. Company
spokeswoman Jen Rosenberg said that the chain had sent warnings to all its
stores about compressed air canisters' being used for huffing but that it
did not have a policy prohibiting sales to minors.Weiss said huffing may be
popular among suburban youngsters for a simple reason: access."A person
doesn't have to go somewhere seedy to get this stuff," he said. "Kids have
died from inhalants in schools and in church.

It can happen anywhere."