METH KIDS

The Methamphetamine problem in the Tri Cities is increasing dramatically.
Police have busted labs used to make the deadly drug in houses, apartments,
and even moving vehicles. The chemicals leaking out into your neighborhood
put you and your children at risk.

News Channel Eleven's Erica Estep investigated the affect on the most
innocent victims... our kids.

"It blowed this whole place up," Misty Williams remembers..

"From these accidents, unfortunately, people die and, unfortunately,
children will die," Robert Steuart of the Department of Human Services
explains the effects.

"That's like being in a war zone," Erma McCulley describes what she's seen.

Kids are being caught in the crossfire of the war against the deadly
drug... crystal meth.

Thick suits and gloves protect police from the chemicals inside a meth lab,
but the fumes already fill the lungs of children who called these labs home.

Steuart explains, "Children will tell you what they see on the counter
tops, the loops and the coils and chemicals, just as if they were telling
you about a scooby doo cartoon."

Once the meth cookers and addicts are behind bars...the state department of
children's services steps in to save their kids.

They're wisked off to the hospital for a physical exam...then placed in a
new home either with family or strangers...and all their possessions are
left behind.

"If they're living there, bless their little hearts, it's going to do
damage to their minds, their health, everything," Erma says, "and they've
done nothing but be born."

Erma McCulley is thankful to be holding her grandkids. Their lives were in
danger not from being related to a meth maker, but from a neighbor who set
up a meth lab just a few feet from where they play.

"I hope and pray that they get all the labs out of here because their lives
don't need to be in danger," Erma says.

The doors of this former meth lab are now locked up tight, but nearly 4
months after the bust here the smell of chemicals still lingers in the air.
It's from the poisonous fumes kids in this neighborhood were breathing for
months.

Kids like Misty Williams' 4 year old son whose grandparents live right
across the street.

Misty remembers, "I was really terrified to really tell you. It's awful. It
upsets you and makes you want to cry that something's that close to your
little boy."

It was so close that Williams worries about the long term affects on her
son. She's counting her blessings that police shut down the drug making
operation before something went terribly wrong.

"He plays out here. Just think, if it did go bad, I probably never would
have got to see him again," Misty says.

There are no long term studies on the affects of kids exposed to meth
production, but in the short term, they can have respiratory problems,
slowed brain functions, liver and kidney malfunction, and continuing
psychological problems.