OFFICIAL WARNS OF DANGERS TO KIDS

"We Feel Confident That This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg", Roy Cooper,
Attorney gGeneral

RALEIGH, N.C. - Social workers may be accustomed to removing children
from squalid homes, but they face threats to their own health when
those homes double as methamphetamine labs, Attorney General Roy
Cooper warned Thursday.

As meth labs spread across the state, county social service offices
must equip themselves to help neglected youths who have grown up
around dangerous chemicals, Cooper told a meeting of the N.C.
Association of County Directors of Social Services.

"We feel confident that this is the tip of the iceberg," Cooper said
of the recent boom in meth lab busts in the western part of the state.
"All of you will see it."

Of the 177 labs busted last year in North Carolina, about a quarter
contained children. Many of those kids wind up in the social service
system.

"This is going to be something that overwhelms as it goes across the
state, so we might as well be ready to handle it," said Donn
Gunderson, director of the Craven County Department of Social Services
and a member of a training panel looking at how to protect social
workers entering homes where meth labs are housed.

The social services director in Alexander County said authorities this
week found a meth lab in the bedroom of a 3-year-old.

Cooper's office showed the directors photographs taken at homes that
have been busted: mounds of trash in the back yards; food packages
sitting next to the chemicals used to "cook" the drug; and plastic
soda bottles in kitchens now full of meth.

"They've become hazardous waste dumps," Cooper said. Meanwhile, "kids
are crawling around in jeans and a T-shirt. That's dangerous."

The chemicals used to make the highly addictive drug, such as ammonia,
lye, antifreeze and the active ingredient in cold tablets, can be
purchased in discount and feed stores. When combined, they create
hazardous fumes and the potential for explosions.

"There are often toxic clouds that are created that cause danger to
people who would inhale them," Cooper said. Some law officers have
been made sick by inhaling the fumes.

Hazardous material teams wear chemical suits while investigating
busted labs.

The Department of Health and Human Services and county DSS offices are
working to write protocols on how to decontaminate children in these
situations. Meanwhile, the attorney general's office is using a
$312,000 federal grant to train DSS workers in four counties.

Insights gleaned from those sessions ultimately will be spread to all
100 counties.

Cooper said he'll ask the General Assembly this spring to toughen
penalties for people who manufacture methamphetamines.

His office also is working with retailers to alert authorities when
they see customers purchase excessive amount of meth ingredients, such
as over-the-counter cold medicines.

Swain County DSS Director John Eller said the meth war is frustrating
to fight, especially when the people being arrested for making the
drug are passing on the recipe to fellow criminals.

The attorney general empathized with Eller and said stemming meth's
spread across the state will take vigilance by DSS and police: "Join
us in this fight while it's still early."