Pubdate: Sun, 07 Jun 2015
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Hudson Sangree

HASH-OIL BURNS ARE EXPLODING DANGER

On her cellphone, Tracey Clark keeps snapshots of her two sons 
dressed as groomsmen at a family friend's wedding last fall. The 
younger boy, 13, smiles under a mop of curly brown hair. His older 
brother, 15, is clean cut and handsome.

Flipping ahead in her phone's photo gallery, Clark shares pictures of 
her boys taken two months later, when they're almost unrecognizable. 
In November, the teens landed in intensive care at Shriners Hospitals 
for Children in Sacramento, enveloped in gauze, breathing tubes in 
their throats, their faces raw and red from the massive third-degree 
burns suffered in a fire, which prosecutors say was caused by an 
illegal hash-oil lab at their uncle's duplex in Butte County.

The two, who investigators believe innocently walked into their 
uncle's workspace just before it exploded in flames, suffered burns 
over 40 to 60 percent of their bodies.

"I was scared they were going to die," said Clark, a phlebotomist 
with the American Red Cross who lives in Pittsburg. "I thought, 'This 
isn't real. This isn't happening.'"

Similar scenes have played out throughout California in recent years 
as intense fires from the illegal manufacture of butane hash oil - 
cheap and easy to make but extremely volatile - have exploded.

At two of Northern California's major burn treatment centers - UC 
Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and Shriners Hospitals for 
Children, Northern California - injuries from butane hash-oil 
explosions account for 8 to 10 percent of severe burn cases, a larger 
percentage than from car wrecks and house fires combined, said Dr. 
David Greenhalgh, chief burn surgeon at both hospitals.

"It's kind of an epidemic for us," Greenhalgh said. There have been 
times when half of the 12 beds in UC Davis' burn unit were filled 
with patients injured in hash-oil explosions, he said.

Between 2007 and 2014, 101 patients with suspected or confirmed burns 
from butane fires were admitted to the two hospitals, most of them in 
the past three years, according to Greenhalgh. Most were adults, but 
six of the admitted patients were under 18, some as young as 2 or 3 years old.

The case of the two teens, who were released from Shriners earlier 
this year after months in intensive care and multiple surgeries and 
skin grafts, was especially troubling because of their ages and the 
extent of their injuries, Greenhalgh said.

The Sacramento Bee is not naming them at the family's request and 
because they are the juvenile victims of an alleged crime.

Statewide, illegal manufacturing of hash oil has become a public 
health menace on a par with illegal methamphetamine labs in prior 
decades, according to some law enforcement officials.

While federal and state statistics on butane hash-oil explosions are 
not readily available, there are numerous reports of arrests and 
fires at the local level.

In Butte County, for instance, prosecutors said 31 illegal hash-oil 
operations were uncovered in 2014. "We're already on track to exceed 
that this year," District Attorney Michael Ramsey said. The numbers 
are similar to the annual count of meth labs the county was breaking 
up in the 1980s and '90s, he said.

"What we see now is a reprise of that (but) with more unsophisticated 
manufacturers," Ramsey said. "They look on the Internet, order up the 
supplies - and blow themselves up."

Ramsey's office is prosecuting the teens' uncle, 30-year-old Brandon 
Qassem, on seven felony charges, including possession of marijuana 
for sale, child endangerment and recklessly causing a fire that 
resulted in great bodily injury. Badly burned in the fire, Qassem is 
not incarcerated pending his trial because Butte County jailers are 
unable to cope with his medical needs, Ramsey said.

His wife, Angela Qassem, who is charged with two felonies, including 
child endangerment, told investigators that she and her husband were 
unemployed and making butane hash oil to sell to medical marijuana 
dispensaries, the district attorney said.

Easy to make, hard to control

Butane hash oil, a highly concentrated form of cannabis, is illegal 
to manufacture but is legal to sell under California's medical 
marijuana law, meaning dispensaries must get their supply from 
illicit operations, according to law enforcement officials. The 
substance is sold in different forms to smoke and also used to make 
cookies and candies.

Hash oil's concentration of THC, the active substance in marijuana, 
can reach 85 percent compared with a marijuana bud's typical 
concentration of about 25 percent, said Vic Massenkoff, an 
investigator with the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District 
and one of the state's leading experts on butane hash-oil fires.

Hash oil, made from discarded marijuana trimmings, sells for $800 to 
$1,300 per pound wholesale and can have a retail street value of 
$22,000 per pound, he said.

The lucrative market is helping to drive hash-oil production, while 
the wide availability of online videos and inexpensive supplies is 
compounding the number of tragic fires, said law enforcement and 
medical professionals.

Massenkoff delivers training sessions to law enforcement groups and 
firefighters on the dangers of butane hash oil, also called BHO or honey oil.

The key ingredient is compressed butane, which comes in canisters 
about the size of a 16-ounce beer can that drugmakers can easily 
purchase in bulk.

On Amazon, for example, a simple query for "BHO" pulls up the 
essential supplies a hash-oil maker would need, including a $40 case 
of 12 cans of "5x Power Butane Super Refined Fuel Gas," which 
Massenkoff said is a favorite brand of hash-oil makers. There was 
also a large glass extraction tube for $37, a book called "How to 
Make BHO" and nonstick silicone mats for making dabs, the small 
potent drops of hash oil popular with smokers.

Typically, a hash oil maker crams a tall tube with marijuana and 
shoots the liquid butane through it. The butane acts as a solvent to 
extract and concentrate the THC-containing compounds, which drip into 
a glass container, usually Pyrex. It's then set on a bath of warm 
water or a hot plate to help vaporize the butane, leaving behind the 
pure hash oil.

The biggest danger comes from the vaporized butane  invisible, 
odorless and heavier than air  that sinks to the floor and collects 
in enclosed spaces.

"These folks are standing in a cloud of clear, odorless butane," with 
the substance absorbing into their clothing, Massenkoff said.

While many online videos carry warnings to avoid fires by only making 
hash oil outdoors, most manufacturing is done indoors because it's illegal.

Almost any ignition source, from a spark of static electricity to a 
water heater's pilot light, can turn the butane into an explosive inferno.

Curbs on butane buying?

Lawmakers are looking at ways to regulate the sale of butane. A bill 
introduced in February by Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, 
would prohibit any individual from buying more than 400 milliliters 
of butane in a month and impose reporting requirements on retailers.

Similar limits on the cold medicine pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient 
of methamphetamine, are credited with curbing meth production in 
California in recent years. The law now requires purchasers to show 
their driver's license to buy a single box.

Similar restrictions are needed for butane, said Massenkoff, who has 
written to Amazon asking the company to stop selling butane canisters in bulk.

Doctors and emergency crews have become better at identifying the 
causes of hash-oil burns, Greenhalgh said. Patients are predominantly 
young men who tend to be burned in groups of two and three while 
making the oil, he said.

Those whose clothes catch on fire can suffer third-degree burns over 
much of their bodies, including their faces. With massive burns the 
body swells, shutting off the airway, and an untreated patient would 
typically die in a few hours, the doctor said.

The body needs huge amounts of calories to heal from major burns, but 
such badly injured patients have a hard time getting enough nutrition 
through their feeding tubes and the body begins to break down muscle 
and weaken further, he said.

"These are big burns," Greenhalgh said.

Hospital stays of months are common in the worst cases, including 
long stints in intensive care. There's a constant risk of infection, 
multiple skin grafts, months or years of painful recovery, and 
scarring and disfigurement. Medical bills can run into the millions 
of dollars, though many patients are uninsured, the doctor said.

Clark, the Contra Costa teens' mother and a widow, is sharing her 
family's story to warn people of the human cost from illicit 
manufacturing of butane hash oil.

The horrific burns have changed daily life for Clark and her sons.

The boys are schooled at home while they recover. Once a day, Clark 
changes her younger son's dressings on his raw back. He's had 10 
skin-graft operations and still must undergo reconstructive surgery 
on his face. She also must massage her older son each day to loosen 
the tight areas where his skin is healing from five operations.

It could be a year or more before her sons will be able to resume a 
normal life. Although some might consider their faces burned beyond 
recognition, their mother said, "I can tell it's them."
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