When acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart was a special agent conducting drug raids in the early 1980s, her safety equipment was a pair of plastic gloves.

And she said she and her colleagues couldn't figure out why they frequently suffered headaches and "kind of had hallucinations" as they drove back to the office after raids.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has come a long way in understanding the hazards of illicit drugs and drug labs in the nearly three decades since Leonhart became an agent.

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