Pubdate: March 2, 1999 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Michael Janofsky FATAL CRASH REVEALS INHALANTS AS DANGER TO YOUTH CHESTER HEIGHTS, Pa. - The impact of the car crash tore bark off a tree along U.S. Route 1, and now sad words are written there as a memorial to the five girls who were killed. "We love you all." "Forever rest in peace." "I will always love you." The tragedy of five juniors from nearby Penncrest High School dying in a late-afternoon car accident on Jan. 29 was horrific enough for this area of middle-class suburbs southwest of Philadelphia. By all accounts, the girls were exemplary citizens, bright students and popular. But neither residents of the area nor school officials nor, least of all, the parents of the girls, were prepared for what followed last week: a report from the Delaware County medical examiner's office that the driver of the car, Loren Wells, 16, of Media, had inhaled a chemical solvent that could have impaired her judgment. Further analyses found that three of the other girls had inhaled as well. "We were finally getting back to normal," said Laird Warner, the superintendent of the school district. "Then this hit." Experts who study drug use by young people say sniffing or inhaling chemicals -- young people call it huffing -- is one of the most common forms of drug use among teen-agers starting to experiment, and one of the most potentially dangerous, capable of inflicting serious damage to the heart, brain, lungs, liver and kidneys that sometimes causes death. Inhalants are easier to find and cheaper to buy than marijuana and alcohol because the chemicals are found in hundreds of everyday products, from paint thinners and cleaning fluids to marking pens and aerosol cans of whipped cream. Moreover, inhaling may arouse little suspicion among relatives and friends unless a major medical problem develops. "This is a silent epidemic," said Harvey Weiss, executive director of the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, a private nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas. "It is silent because people don't talk about it, and the numbers of people who use these substances is significant." Most are school-aged children. Annual national surveys by the University of Michigan to measure illicit drug use by 8th-, 10th- and 12th-grade students found that chemical inhalants were the most widely tried illicit drug among 8th-grade students from 1991 through 1995, before marijuana moved into first place. In the most recent study, for 1998, 20.5 percent of eighth-grade students admitted to having tried an inhalant, compared with 22.2 percent who admitted trying marijuana. The survey found that 11.1 percent of the eighth-grade students surveyed had used an inhalant in the past year, compared with 16.9 percent who had used marijuana; and 4.8 percent had used an inhalant in the past month, compared with 9.7 percent for marijuana use. Inhalant use drops off as teen-agers move on to greater use of marijuana and alcohol. The 1998 survey found that 8.0 percent of 10th-grade students and 6.2 percent of 12th-grade students said they had used inhalants in the past year, while 31.1 percent of 10th-grade students said they had used marijuana in the past year and 37.5 percent of 12th-graders did. "The numbers say we have got a large number of kids using a wide spectrum of inhalants," said Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services in Bethesda, Md. "Some defy the imagination. But the issue is not to criminalize the use or ban all the substances. The issue is to make parents and kids aware and deal with the root causes of the use of these substances." Joseph Haviland, principal of Penncrest High School, which has about 1,300 students, said beer is typically the intoxicant of choice among the students. He said neither teachers nor school administrators ever suspected that students were involved with inhalants. State troopers said the car could have been traveling more than 70 miles an hour, well above the posted limit of 55. But even after autopsies of the crash victims revealed the presence of a toxic inhalant, parents of the dead teen-agers did not want to accept the findings. Dr. Dimitri Contostavlos, the Delaware County medical examiner, said Miss Wells had been "under the influence" of diflouroethane, a chemical component of Duster II, a spray that is used to clean computer keyboards. Contostavlos' toxicology report included the finding only because investigators found an empty can of Duster II in the Chevrolet Corsica that Miss Wells was driving. A law-enforcement official familiar with other tests said the autopsies of at least three other girls found the same substance. In his report on Miss Wells, Contostavlos concluded that "driver impairment, with the loss of control on a straight road in daylight, in good weather, with no other traffic involved, resulted not from youthful inexperience and a dangerous stretch of road, but primarily from intoxication due to inhalation abuse." In a written statement this week, the parents of Miss Wells and the other girls -- Tracy Graham, 17; Rachel Lehr, 17; Shaena Grigaitis, 16, and Rebecca Weirich, 16 -- contended that "it seems clear to us that there is inconclusive evidence that our children intentionally abused the cleaning agent involved." The parents proposed that the substance had been airborne. They declined further comment, asking that they be allowed to "resume the healing process." Contostavlos, who tested the parents' theory on himself by sitting in a car and releasing a can of the cleaner, said he stood by his findings. Experts say the parents' response reflects a common situation. A 1997 survey by the Consumer Product Safety Commission found that 91 percent of parents talked to their children about substance abuse but fewer than half said they ever talked about inhalants. And 95 percent said they believed their children had never used inhalants. "This is a very difficult situation," said Ann Brown, chairman of the safety commission. "Even the best of parents don't realize there could be a danger, that a child could even die on the first sniff." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea