Pubdate: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2004 San Jose Mercury News Contact: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390 Author: Fox Butterfield, New York Times Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) HOME METH LABS MAKING KIDS ILL BOONE, N.C. - Sandra Rupert, a counselor at an elementary school in this Blue Ridge Mountain town, wondered about two sisters who 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, where the girls slept. The girls, in the second and third grades, 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. The girls are among the young victims found in homes with clandestine laboratories that, new evidence suggests, face a health threat as hazardous as that faced by 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 is 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 Drug Enforcement Administration. Last year, 8,000 illegal methamphetamine labs were seized nationwide, and 3,300 children were found in them, DEA figures show. In addition, 48 children were burned or injured and one was killed when methamphetamine labs caught 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 labs, said Carla Aaron of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services. Cooking methamphetamine is an extremely toxic process, said Dr. Andrew Mason, a forensic toxicologist who lives in Boone. Both of the common methods used produce dangerous gases and leave hazardous waste, Mason said. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin