METH LABS LEAVE HIDDEN DANGER

Few Rules Exist For Cleanup Before New Occupancy

Imagine this scenario -- You're sitting in a chair in your new living room,
watching your 1-year-old crawl around on the floor, playing with his toys.
Meanwhile, his 3-year-old sister runs down the hallway toward her room,
dragging her hands along the walls.

You are unaware that the previous residents used the kitchen to cook the
dangerous, highly addictive drug methamphetamine. The drug is a concoction
of over-the-counter medications, poisonous household products and other
substances that directly affects the central nervous system.

After two years in the house, the meth addicts were arrested and their
belongings moved out. But the extended manufacture of methamphetamine
leaves its mark - in the carpet, the curtains, the drywall, almost any
porous surface.

Each time your 1-year-old puts his hands on the carpet and then to his
mouth, he may ingest some of the meth. The same goes for the 3-year-old
girl or anyone else touching the walls.

Oregon and Washington set stringent cleanup standards before a meth-house
can be occupied again. But in Illinois and other Midwestern states, where
there has only recently been an influx of meth that has plagued the West
Coast for more than a decade, there are no such laws.

In fact, once authorities leave a house or apartment after cleaning up
toxic chemicals and posting warning signs, the owner can take the signs down.

"We have no mechanism to say that placard has to stay up," said Master Sgt.
Bruce Liebe, clandestine laboratory program coordinator for the Illinois
State Police. "We have a moral and ethical obligation to do this. But there
is no penalty for removing it and no vehicle to enforce the placard
remaining in place."

As methamphetamine becomes more prevalent, the state is trying to determine
the best response, including a task force appointed by Gov. George Ryan to
study a uniform strategy.

James O'Brien, manager of the office of emergency response with the
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said the aim is to fight meth on
three fronts: prevention, law enforcement and cleanup.

"This is dangerous because the ingredients don't come from across the
border anywhere, like so many other drugs. All the ingredients are
available locally, and the recipes are on the Internet as well as
directions on how to jerry-rig apparatuses from normal household items,"
O'Brien said.

"The only way to get behind the problem is to explain to people how
devastating the addiction is and the personality changes it causes. And,
the fact that children bear much more of a brunt of the impact of this -
socially, not just by exposure."

The drug's use is growing in Illinois and across the Midwest. In Missouri,
the number of meth labs that were seized just by the highway patrol
increased to 589 last year from 121 in 1996.

Some theorize that meth crept into Illinois from Missouri, moving from west
to east across the state. The Illinois State Police recorded 24 lab
seizures in 1997, 87 in 1998, 246 in 1999 and nearly 400 in 2000.

In Springfield last month, residential fires led to the discovery of two
suspected meth labs - one in the 1100 block of North Amos Avenue and a
second in a mobile home on Terminal Avenue. Such fires are common,
authorities say, especially with the inexperienced meth cooker.

More often, police investigations lead to confiscation of drug-making
materials.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration, or some other law enforcement
agency, goes on the property and collects the items needed to prosecute the
case. The DEA then calls in a contractor-in the Springfield area, it's
Safety Kleen out of Rockford - to come in and confiscate the other lab
materials and chemicals.

But even then, drug residue often remains.

"It's dependent on what occurred or how long it was happening," said Mike
Moomey, division chief of toxicology with the Illinois Department of Public
Health, which can provide information to homeowners about how to clean up
their property.

"If the lab was only set up for a month or so, there may not be much
contamination. But if it's been there six months or a year, and they're
producing a lot of meth ... the likelihood of exposure increases."

Moomey said the state is still trying to figure out how it wants to
regulate the cleanup of meth sites.

"We have good information about the chemicals used to make it," Moomey
said. "Sometimes mercury and lead are used, and we have a lot of
information about them. But the finished product we don't have good
information on."

According to Web sites designed to educate the public, the drug has a
variety of effects. It can cause increased body temperature, heightened
blood pressure, severe depression, paranoia, insomnia, loss of appetite or
weight, delusions and tremors.

The drug is so potent that many of the adverse side effects stay with a
reformed addict even after treatment, according to Bruce Carter, an
administrator at the Wells Center in Jacksonville.

"Meth is such a powerful addiction. It's more powerful than most any other
drug we see. It's even more powerful than the addiction you see with crack
cocaine," he said.

"The other thing that makes it particularly devastating is that long-term
users will start to develop extreme symptoms of paranoia and psychoses.
Someone can develop a mental illness that does not go away once they quit
using the drug."

Researchers still don't know how the drug and substances used to make it
affects others in a meth household.

"The data that's missing is what the exposure to infants, pregnant women,
the toddler crawling around on the floor who's exposed - we don't have
(toxicology) data for meth," Carter said.

When a meth lab is seized in Washington state, the local health department
goes in and takes sample swabs, especially of porous surfaces. The law
requires use of a special cleanup crew if the traces of methamphetamine
exceed 5 parts per billion in a 100-square-centimeter area.

Mike Martinson is the owner of M Group Environmental of Spokane, Wash. His
company specializes in cleaning up meth labs.

"If a house is marked unfit for inhabitance, personal property, clothes,
window coverings, carpeting - all that goes out. Sometimes we will even go
as far as removing drywall if there's heavy contamination. We often take
out the countertops, appliances," he said.

The owner pays for the cleanup.

That's still controversial. Some landlords make claims to their insurance
companies, and the companies balk. But Martinson said he knows of two
homeowners who successfully sued their insurers.

"Often, people are afraid to fight their insurance companies or they are
afraid that if they fight, the insurance company will no longer cover their
rental properties," he said.

Randy Raynolds, deputy vice president of the Illinois Association of
Realtors, said the issues are relevant here.

"We can understand the concern for children," he said. "Once you start
making people responsible for the lifestyles of the people they rent to ..."

At this point, he said, there are no laws that specifically require a
homeowner to disclose to a renter or buyer whether a piece of property has
been used as a meth lab, unless an explosion in the house has caused
structural damage.

Moomey said state agencies will try to decide while meeting on the subject
how to best handle the situation.

"We decided we need to look at funding and legislation," Moomey said.
"Should you penalize the property owner when they have someone who comes in
and rents a piece of property from them and operates a meth lab? But on the
other hand, should the state pay for that?"

For more information, contact the Illinois Department of Public Health,
Division of Environmental Health, at 525 W. Jefferson St. in Springfield;
call 782-5830; or visit the IDPH Web site at www.idph.state.il.us.