AILMENTS SURFACE IN POLICE EXPOSED TO METH CHEMICALS

In the small Oklahoma town of Cromwell, Hank Neal was living the good life.
At age 32, he was a husband, father of four and a well-known Seminole
County deputy sheriff. When he wasn't chasing the bad guys, Neal attended
every baseball game in town.

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Now, on his bad days, Neal uses a walker to get to the bathroom. Gout, a
joint disease, has invaded both of his arms and legs, causing him to hunch
over and draw inward. His days are scheduled around doctors' appointments
and workers' compensation hearings. His nights are worse.

Neal's wife, Dian, loses her composure when she tells of his suicide
attempts. There have been two so far.

In December 1999, Neal raided a methamphetamine lab while on duty and got a
bloody nose. He didn't think anything of it, not even when, a week later,
he began throwing up and having diarrhea.

At the time, they blamed a beer can that was hurled at him from a passing
car, hitting him in the head. Now they blame the meth lab.

Victims of methamphetamine can reach well beyond the addicts and their
assorted crimes. As the epidemic continues, deadly and debilitating
ailments are surfacing in police officers and deputies assigned to
investigate these labs, which are found in garages and kitchens, in mobile
vans and motel rooms and elsewhere.

Only recently has the significance of being exposed to meth chemicals
become known. A few years ago, officers raided labs with rubber gloves. Now
they wear full-body protective gear and masks.

Sometimes officers stumble onto the labs accidentally. Unprotected, they
are subjected to the fumes of phosphane gas, hydrochloric acid, anhydrous
ammonia, Red Devil lye and a half-dozen other substances.

The health fallout is becoming more apparent as Oklahoma's meth lab
epidemic now approaches five years. What was once a series of anecdotal
cases may well become an alarming trend, those in law enforcement say.

"One of my agents has a spot on his liver. I know another agent from
another agency who has a spot on his lung," said Dianne Barker-Harrold,
district attorney for Adair, Cherokee, Sequoyah and Wagoner counties in
northeastern Oklahoma, where meth lab seizures are common.

Barker-Harrold told of a Muldrow officer who found a meth lab during a
traffic stop.

"He looked in the trunk of a car, took the lid off something, smelled it
and he was down for the count because it was hydrochloric acid. The fumes
are just terrible," she said. "There's going to be long-term effects to
these officers."

Those long-term effects can matter to everyone in terms of health care
costs and emotional fallout.

Consider Jamie Ward, a young Yukon police officer who assisted in searching
for meth lab suspects during a raid in January. Ward, who was not wearing
protective gear, ended up in the emergency room that night.

"She was in really bad shape and nearly died of lung injuries," said John
Duncan, chief agent for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous
Drugs. "Her lungs are permanently and irrevocably damaged."

The damage not only ended her law enforcement career, but her part-time
singing career, Duncan said. At age 30, Ward constantly wheezes and
struggles to breathe.

"Everything she worked for is down the tubes," Duncan said.

Some officers don't get sick until repeated exposures over time. The
effects are cumulative, meaning fumes that don't do damage in one dose can
build up over time, said Jerry Harris of the Oklahoma Narcotics Bureau.

Different chemicals have different effects as well. Some attack the lungs,
others the kidney and liver, others the joints, Duncan said.

Roy Wunderlich, a Los Angeles police officer, had investigated about 1,500
meth labs in his career. He later developed a rare liver cancer that has
been associated with breathing chemicals.

Wunderlich battled the Los Angeles Police Department for compensation and
won. But that's not always the case.

Neal, for instance, recently lost his claim for workers' compensation. An
order from the workers' compensation court said the statute of limitations
had passed. His wife said that is because they didn't realize meth could be
the cause until two years later, when a blood test revealed a severe infection.

Other officers may never realize the true cause of their illnesses.

"That's one of the problems with longtime exposures," Duncan said. "You
can't always tell what the lab caused and what was caused by just normal
living. We're all subject to getting cancer and lung ailments."

Exposure to meth labs has serious health consequences for everyone involved.

"We're going to have real problems in the future in terms of health care.
All these people we're running across in these labs, they're going to have
health problems in the future and the health care system is going to have a
problem," Harris said.