WHEN METH HOUSES BECOME HOMES, TENANTS ARE AT RISK

Sammy Rosas thought it was a little weird that his neighbors were
raking leaves at 3 a.m.

At the time he just chalked it up to eccentricity, but the episode
came back to his mind when he returned home one day to find his street
packed with federal agents.

He was shocked when the Drug Enforcement Agency informed him that the
house across the street on the 3300 block of Ravenwood Drive was used
to manufacture methamphetamine.

There was neither a telltale chemical smell nor the groups of
strangers coming and going that signal a drug house, said Rosas, who
formerly cleaned up meth labs in Florida.

"We never knew," said Rosas.

Often, neither do the families who move in after the
bust.

A Pennsylvania couple recently made news when they got sick after
purchasing their dream home. Tests showed trace amounts of
methamphetamine left by the previous owners were giving them
difficulty breathing, inflamed lungs, sore throats and headaches.

The family that moved in after the meth bust on Ravenwood Drive hasn't
experienced any ill effects. But Kowanda Jimperson said she had no
clue about the home's history when she bought it in July.

Meth is a powerful narcotic cooked using a host of toxic ingredients
including battery acid, paint thinner and benzene. Cleaning up a lab
requires thousands of dollars and hours of scrubbing, hosing and burning.

Georgia has no official standard, though, as to what's considered
safe.

"No standards whatsoever," said Gordy Powell, the owner of Georgia
Clean, a Smyrna-based industrial cleaning company that dismantles meth
labs, among other things.

Powell follows Colorado's standards, which are the most strict in the
country. He's trying out a new method to clean a meth house, which
involves circulating super-heated air through the building for 12 to
15 hours. It's an improvement over at least two weeks of scrubbing the
floors and walls of toxic fumes, Powell said.

"We're trying to extract what's been (soaked) into the walls," said
Powell, who charges $10 per square foot for a cleaning.

If a house isn't properly cleaned, residents can be exposed to toxic
chemicals through touching or breathing contaminated dust particles,
according to the Georgia Department of Community Health.

State health officials are studying what health hazards are posed by
methamphetamine residue, especially to infants and small children who
are the most exposed to carpets and other porous materials.

At high enough levels, exposure may cause health effects similar to
those experienced by meth users, according to the community health
department.

Realtors aren't required to tell potential buyers that a home is a
former meth lab, said Keith Hatcher, the senior director of public
policy for the Georgia Association of Realtors.

Hatcher said known defects such as a leaky roof or a cracked
foundation must be disclosed, but that doesn't apply to a home's
history. It's the same for supposedly haunted houses or one where
someone was killed, he said.

"That's not the way the law operates," said Hatcher. "It protects you
against known danger."

Hatcher said while a Realtor doesn't have to disclose the history, a
potential buyer has every right to ask about a house's former uses.

Another resource available to homeowners is the DEA's National
Clandestine Laboratory Register, which discloses all known meth labs
in a state going back to 2004.

The list shows Richmond County has the second-most labs in the state
with 34, behind Walker County. Aiken County has 20 and Columbia County
five.