Kids Can Be Incidental Victims of Meth Labs

Dec. 12, 2004 — -- It's becoming a more common sight in many towns -- police raiding homes where drug addicts are manufacturing methamphetamine, right where they and their children live.

"These children are, in essence, living in gas chambers that could explode at any time," says Betsy Dunn, a social worker with the Tennessee Department of Children's Services.

Making methamphetamine is easy. All it takes is a combination of decongestant tablets and common household chemicals. Those ingredients are then cooked in a process that creates poisonous fumes and toxic residue.

"We've seen children drink muratic acid, which is hydrochloric acid," says Dr. Sullivan Smith. "We have seen burns from direct exposure."

Smith runs the emergency room at Tennessee's Cookeville Regional Hospital. He says children removed from homemade meth labs are immediately scrubbed of all chemicals, but the signs of exposure can linger. Many suffer from open sores, respiratory ailments or worse.

"You see children that are small for their age; you see behavioral disorders," he says. "The scariest part of this is we don't know the long-term effects."

The methamphetamine epidemic has been spreading across the country, mainly in rural areas, for the last decade. In 1995, there were 818 meth labs seizures across the country. Last year, that number climbed to 10,293, due in part to aggressive policing and better reporting from the states.

Tennessee is ground zero in the war on meth. The state expects to rescue 750 children from homemade meth labs. Dunn says meth is unlike any other drug she has encountered.

"It totally consumes a person," she says. "People lose all concern for their children, and they simply turn their backs and oftentimes throw them away."

Charlotte Sanders is a former meth addict who lost custody of her daughters after a raid three years ago. Amber and Ashley were 3 and 5 years old when their parents got hooked on the drug. The parents soon were cooking meth in the home.