HOME METH LABS MAKING KIDS ILL

BOONE, N.C. - Sandra Rupert, a counselor at an elementary school in
this Blue Ridge Mountain town, wondered about two sisters who 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, where the girls slept.

The girls, in the second and third grades, were suffering from the
toxic fumes emitted by the methamphetamine cooking, said Chad Slagle,
a social worker with the Watauga County Child Protective Services
Unit. They were removed immediately from the house and taken away from
their mother.

The girls are among the young victims found in homes with clandestine
laboratories that, new evidence suggests, face a health threat as
hazardous as that faced by those who actually 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 is 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 Drug Enforcement Administration.

Last year, 8,000 illegal methamphetamine labs were seized nationwide,
and 3,300 children were found in them, DEA figures show. In addition,
48 children were burned or injured and one was killed when
methamphetamine labs caught fire or exploded, as they sometimes do,
the agency's statistics show.

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 labs, said Carla Aaron of the
Tennessee Department of Children's Services.

Cooking methamphetamine is an extremely toxic process, said Dr. Andrew
Mason, a forensic toxicologist who lives in Boone. Both of the common
methods used produce dangerous gases and leave hazardous waste, Mason
said.