HOME DRUG-MAKING LABORATORIES EXPOSE CHILDREN TO TOXIC FALLOUT

BOONE, N.C. - Sandra Rupert, a counselor at an elementary
school in this town tucked high up in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
wondered last year 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 Child Protective Services Unit. They were removed
immediately from the house and taken away from their mother. They had
to leave without taking any of their clothes or toys, Mr. 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.
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.

What makes the spread particularly worrisome is new evidence that
children living in homes with laboratories face a health threat as
hazardous as 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 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 D.E.A., 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 D.E.A.
figures. In addition, 48 children were burned or injured and one was
killed when methamphetamine laboratories caught on 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 laboratories, said Carla Aaron,
a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services.
About the same number were placed with relatives who were not cooking
methamphetamine, Ms. Aaron said.

Here in Boone, a town of 22,000 in western North Carolina near the
Tennessee border, 41 illegal methamphetamine laboratories have been
seized in the past two years, and 17 children have been placed in
foster homes or with other relatives, said Mr. Slagle, the social worker.

"We had heard about meth for years, but it was always a West Coast
problem," Mr. Slagle said. "So we were completely surprised when it
hit us here."

It is hard to compare the impact of different drugs. But given the
harm methamphetamine does to children and the large amount of toxic
waste cooking it creates - five pounds for every pound of
methamphetamine - some law enforcement officials are now comparing the
problem to the crack cocaine epidemic in the nation's big cities in
the 1980's.

"Meth makes crack look like child's play, both in terms of what it
does to the body and how hard it is to get off," said Capt. Richard P.
Nuzzo of the New York State Police. Mr. Nuzzo is a member of the New
York State Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team, which
deals with methamphetamine.

The authorities in New York State found their first methamphetamine
laboratory only in 1999, Captain Nuzzo said. By last year the number
had climbed to 73, mostly upstate.

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. But it also leads to
paranoia, delusions and memory loss, and over a period of time to
physical decay like rotting teeth.

There is debate among experts about how treatable methamphetamine
addiction is. But most specialists believe it is one of the hardest to
treat, requiring that a patient stay in treatment for up to two years.

Cooking methamphetamine is an extremely toxic process, said Dr. Andrew
Mason, a forensic toxicologist who lives in Boone. There are two
common methods used in the mom and pop laboratories, and they both
produce dangerous gasses and leave hazardous waste, Dr. Mason said.

One method combines red phosphorous, usually taken from the strips on
matchboxes; pseudoephedrine, from cold tablets; and iodine. The other
method, more common in farming country, involves anhydrous ammonia, a
liquid fertilizer, cooked with pseudoephedrine and lithium, taken from
car batteries.

"One out of every five labs is discovered because of an explosion,"
Dr. 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 had third-degree burns, Sheriff Shook said.

The red phosphorous method produces phosphine gas, which can be
lethal, Dr. Mason said. The ammonia method can produce a cloud of
ammonia gas, which is also extremely dangerous, he said.

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. Mr. 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.

Sheriff Shook said he believed methamphetamine first came into his
county via truck drivers from Tennessee, who for a price taught local
people how to cook it.

The local authorities have improvised their response. Mr. Slagle said
that in his first case, he was investigating a family for domestic
violence when Sheriff Shook told him the parents had a laboratory he
was going to raid.

"We were completely ignorant about the dangers, and when we took the
kids, we let them keep their clothes and stuffed animals,
contaminating our vehicles and contaminating the children further,"
Mr. Slagle said.

By September last year, the county had worked out a rigorous protocol.
In a raid, the sheriff's deputies found methamphetamine and its
residue all over a house where the father was cooking, so Mr. Slagle
made the man's 15- and 16-year-old sons take off their clothes and
gave them new clothing.

They were then taken to the emergency room in the Boone hospital where
a nurse dressed in a "moon suit" decontaminated them, scrubbing them
down with a special solution and large brushes, "like a car wash," Mr.
Slagle said.

One problem Sheriff Shook faces is that North Carolina's current
penalties for manufacturing 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 out on bond for as
little as $1,000.

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

That was what happened in the case of the two sisters. Their mother
and her boyfriend were charged, but were released on bail, and 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 sheriff's deputies arrived, they found jars
with chemical residue from cooking methamphetamine in the kitchen sink
along with the family's dishes.

The county will now move to terminate the mother's parental rights and
put the girls in a foster home, Mr. Slagle said.

Ms. 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.