FUMES OF METH LAB POSE HEALTH HAZARD

Girls Slept Next To Area Where Mom, Boyfriend Made Drug

BOONE - Sandra Rupert, a counselor at an elementary school in this town
tucked high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, wondered about two sisters who
were second- and third-graders. They had headaches, colds and coughs
virtually every day.

Sheriff Mark Shook found the explanation when he raided the children's home
and discovered their mother and her boyfriend were cooking methamphetamine
in the attic, next to where the girls slept.

The girls were suffering from the toxic fumes emitted by the methamphetamine
cooking, said Chad Slagle, a social worker with the Watauga County's child
protective services unit. They were removed from the house and taken away
from their mother. They had to leave without bringing any clothes or toys,
Slagle said, for fear of further contamination.

The girls are among the young victims as methamphetamine has crossed the
Mississippi and moved to the East Coast in the past few years. The journey
began in California in the 1980s, then spread to rural areas in the Rocky
Mountain states, the Great Plains and on to Iowa and Missouri in the late
1990s.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, small methamphetamine
laboratories, known as mom and pop labs, are now being found in every state
in the East.

Beyond this geographic expansion, what makes the spread of methamphetamine
particularly worrisome is new evidence that children living in homes with
clandestine laboratories face a health threat as hazardous as those who use
the drug.

A study released in January by the National Jewish Medical and Research
Center in Denver, which specializes in respiratory illnesses, found that
poisonous chemicals released in the methamphetamine cooking process spread
throughout buildings where the cooking was being done.

"The study showed that the chemicals are everywhere in the house and that
children living in houses with meth labs might as well be taking the drug
directly," said Michele Leonhart, the acting deputy administrator of the
DEA, which helped finance the research.

Last year, 8,000 illegal methamphetamine laboratories were seized
nationwide, and 3,300 children were found in them, according to DEA figures.

In Tennessee, which has the worst methamphetamine problem in the Southeast,
697 children were removed from their parents' custody and placed in foster
homes over the past 18 months because they were living in places with
methamphetamine laboratories, said Carla Aaron, a spokeswoman for the
Tennessee Department of Children's Services. About the same number were
taken from their parents' homes and placed with relatives who were not
cooking methamphetamine, Aaron said.

In Boone, 41 illegal methamphetamine laboratories have been seized in the
past two years; 17 children have been placed in foster homes or with
relatives, said Slagle, the social worker.

Methamphetamine is an artificial stimulant that releases high levels of the
neurotransmitter dopamine into the brain, producing euphoria and great
energy, often lasting up to 12 hours. It also leads to paranoia, delusions,
memory loss and eventually physical decay, such as rotting teeth.

Cooking methamphetamine is an extremely toxic process, said Dr. Andrew
Mason, a forensic toxicologist from Boone. The two common methods used in
mom and pop labs both produce dangerous gasses and leave hazardous waste, he
said.

"One out of every five labs is discovered because of an explosion," Mason
said. "That alone ought to tell you something. If you heat the ingredients
too high, they spontaneously burst into flame."

Last Monday, a laboratory was discovered when it blew up in a house down a
hollow in the mountains just outside Boone. The man doing the cooking
suffered third-degree burns.

Last year, six members of the volunteer fire department in Deep Gap, a
neighboring town, were injured when they put out a fire in a trailer where
unknown to them, there was a methamphetamine laboratory.

One of the men, Darien South, 31, had his lungs burned so badly that he went
into respiratory arrest for four days. South said that as a result of his
injuries, he had lost his job as a truck driver for Coca-Cola and had so
much difficulty breathing that he had trouble performing his other job, as a
preacher in a Baptist church.

Shook, the sheriff, believes methamphetamine first came into his county via
truck drivers from Tennessee, who for a price taught local people how to
cook it.

One problem Shook faces is that North Carolina's current penalties for
making methamphetamine are light, the same as for growing one marijuana
plant. A first-time offender faces a maximum sentence of six to eight months
in jail and can get released on bond for as little as $1,000.

"So they can be back cooking before we finish the paperwork," Shook said.

That happened in the case of the two sisters. Their mother and her boyfriend
were charged but were released on bail. The grandmother, who was given
custody of the girls, secretly let them go back to their mother.

In January, the methamphetamine laboratory apparently started a fire behind
the house. When the sheriff's deputies arrived, they found jars with
chemical residue from cooking methamphetamine in the kitchen sink along with
the family's dishes.

Rupert, the school counselor, said, "The sad thing is that these girls lost
everything." After they were taken away the first time, people volunteered
to give them new toys and clothes. This time, they had to leave those new
possessions in the house. They too were contaminated.