Pubdate: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 Source: Hendersonville Times-News (NC) Copyright: 2006 Hendersonville Newspaper Corporation Contact: http://www.hendersonvillenews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/793 Author: Scott Parrott, staff writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) HOMEMADE LABS POSE WIDESPREAD THREAT Methamphetamine is a man-made, addictive stimulant drug that is created in illegal laboratories. Ingredients used to create methamphetamine include, denatured alcohol, rubbing alcohol, iodine, nail polish remover, drain cleaner and sinus medicine. Capt. Chris Beddingfield leans forward in his chair and lifts a list of ingredients that sounds like a kitchen cabinet worth of hazardous cleaning supplies or first aid potions. "When you start looking at the chemicals that go into methamphetamine, you can't even pronounce them," says Beddingfield, the head of investigations for the Polk County Sheriff's Department. "There's 45 chemicals listed on this sheet I have got right here," he continues. "This is what they call precursor chemicals, and if you possess them with the intent to manufacture methamphetamine, it's against the law." Beddingfield busted a guy the night before who had stashed such chemicals in his car trunk. Now he's confined upstairs, in the jail above Beddingfield's office. Beddingfield eyes the list. "You've got," he says. Pause. "I can't even say that." He plunges ahead. "Anhydrous ammonia is a big one." "Benzyl Chloride." "Ephedrine." "Iodine." "Lithium." "Red phosphorus." "Sodium." "Taulene." "Acetone." Beddingfield says he has trouble pronouncing some of the chemical names. But he and other law enforcement officers know what they add up to. Take one drug-addicted amateur chemist. Mix in volatile, toxic chemicals. Add heat. It's a recipe for disaster. Danger lurks Seven years ago, police busted nine meth labs in North Carolina. By 2005, the number exploded to 328, nearly one a day, most found stashed in the mountains. Beneath each digit lurks danger, a threatened community. For example, take one lab. A man decides to cook meth. He wants to get high. Maybe he will sell the rest, get enough cash for another batch. He tracks down the recipe on the Internet, or maybe he receives tutoring from an experienced cook. The recipe calls for a laundry list of household chemicals, the sort of stuff found beneath the kitchen sink. Plastic bottles marked poison, do not mix. So he mixes. Mix the wrong chemicals, and it could burst into flames and explode. Firefighters respond, not knowing the danger they face. "It's huge. I mean, it's death. You take a breath of the wrong chemical, you may not even know what you're getting into before it's too late," Beddingfield says. Another scenario: the lab could pump toxic gas into the air. The toxic fumes flow into the carpet, into the ceiling, into the lungs of the neglected child sitting on the carpet in the living room. It's a common scene. The N.C. Attorney General's Office says police find children in a third of the labs they bust. And many suffer from chronic exposure, which can cause permanent damage to their respiratory systems, the State Bureau of Investigation says. Say nothing goes wrong in this meth lab. The cook concocts the drug and sells some on the street. Meth snatches another addict. The cook dumps the toxic by-products from the lab into a sewer, lake, river or roadside. It's a common occurrence, the SBI says. Each pound of meth creates five to seven pounds of hazardous waste. Maybe the cook rents the place, a motel room or apartment. Once the batch is done, he moves out. "You've got all these fumes going everywhere, so the insulation, the carpet, everything in the house will absorb all these fumes," Beddingfield says. "These folks may be renters and move out. Then we come and move in and your child gets poisoned basically because it's there in the floor." Or maybe the police bust the meth lab and arrest the meth cook. They remove the child, putting the boy or girl into state custody. Nearly half the children taken into court-ordered custody by the Henderson County Department of Social Services last year came from homes torn apart by meth. The police burn the child's clothes and belongings, because they were exposed to toxic chemicals. A State Bureau of Investigation team comes to the scene from Raleigh. The agents use disposable supplies that cost between $400 and $600 to handle the toxic waste. They spend 40 hours working on the meth lab, both on site and testing the drug back in the state laboratories in Raleigh. A hazardous materials team cleans up the toxic site, a job that typically costs taxpayers between $4,000 and $10,000 for each lab. The meth cook faces mandatory prison time under tougher penalties adopted by the state in 2004. Another meth lab is busted. That's one lab. Now multiply it by 328. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin