SOCIAL WORKERS FACE HAZARDS FROM METH LABS, COOPER SAYS

About A Quarter Of The Illegal Labs Found In Homes With Children

RALEIGH (AP) - 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 yesterday.

As meth labs spread across the state, from the mountains of the west to the
rural spaces in Eastern North Carolina, county social-services offices must
equip themselves to help neglected children who have grown up around
dangerous chemicals, Cooper told a meeting of the North Carolina
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
involved children. Many of those kids wind up in the social-services 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, the
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 that 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 bought 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-enforcement officers have
been made sick by inhaling the fumes, and hazardous-materials teams wear
chemical suits while investigating the labs.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and county social-services
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 social workers in four counties.

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

Cooper said he will ask the General Assembly this spring to toughen
penalties for people who manufacture methamphetamines. His office is also
working with retailers to alert authorities when they see customers buy
large amounts of meth ingredients, such as over-the-counter cold medicines.