A meth clean-up in West Virginia. Photo by the author
Kateri
Court is a bright, relatively new five-story apartment building with large,
three-panel windows letting in all the sunshine that comes to Bellingham, Washington. You might mistake it for a condo development built for young professionals who have just moved to this city, which sits at the northernmost edge of Washington State.
But Kateri Court is one of 91
buildings run by Catholic Housing Services of Western Washington, whose residents tend to earn well below the area's median income, and where eight apartments are set aside for single parents participating in a program to
transition out of homelessness. Constructed in 2006 with a mix of state,
federal and local funds, the structure meets LEED Gold green
building
standards, thanks in part to a unique ventilation system that reuses
exhaust to help heat the building.
Last year, one resident visited
another's apartment and saw him light up a meth pipe. The visitor alerted
Catholic Housing Services, which called law enforcement. The Whatcom County
Health Department "became concerned that the contamination may have traveled to
adjoining units," according to Steve Powers, division director for Catholic
Housing Services.
First, the department demanded testing
of the units above, below, and beside that of the meth smoker. Neighboring
apartments had some meth residue below the level the latest science suggests is benign, which is 1.5 micrograms per square centimeter—or 1.5 μg/100 cm2—but
above what was then Washington State's own standard. That meant it was time for remediation—a.k.a. a clean-up from a licensed contractor—to satisfy Washington State's safety standard.
"Then they required we test the
whole building," Powers says.
In the end, seven apartments had to
be vacated and remediated, and the culprit seemed to be the pride of Katori
Court: the state-of-the-art, eco-friendly ventilation system. By reusing air,
it was spreading a small quantity of meth particles through the building. Those
seven apartments were basically remodeled. Catholic Housing Services also had to
clean the ducting system for all 40 units and replace the entire ventilation
system. "Unbelievably, the full cost of cleanup was about $300,000," Powers
tells me.
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The damage was covered in their
insurance policy, under the "vandalism" clause, and Catholic Housing Services' insurer has since reworded
their policy to specifically exempt meth contamination, according to Powers. He
adds that the cost to insure the charity's 22 shelters, 17 transitional housing
facilities, and 52 permanent housing properties has skyrocketed. "[It] has
certainly been a burden for us to absorb even if the Kateri expense was covered," Powers says.
And most of it might have been
unnecessary.
To be sure, meth—an amateur chemist's drug made from materials purchasable at
Walmart in bathtubs, closets, basements and makeshift labs across the country—leaves behind a residue that can be harmful.
A 2009 study found that
headaches, nausea, vomiting, respiratory and eye irritation show up in a small
percentage of people exposed to a former meth site, and every so often a horror
story of a family falling ill after buying a "meth house" from an unscrupulous realtor
makes it into a local paper. However, 14 states and countless local
jurisdictions are holding onto an antiquated standard for how much meth residue
is harmful, and treats places that were just downwind of meth
usage—like the apartments in Kateri Court—as if they were full-blown meth labs.
The resulting fees and facility shutdowns tend to impact some of America's most vulnerable citizens.
The first wave of laws regulating
third-hand meth exposure—or contact with meth particles left in the
environment—passed in the early 2000s. They almost universally used the
standard of 0.1 μg/100 cm2, or the the smallest amount that could be
detected.
"That standard comes from a time
when we had very little knowledge of meth, when we just assumed if there was
any, we had to get rid of it." says Greg McKnight, the former clandestine drug
lab manager for the Washington State Department of Health. "It has no
scientific basis."
In 2009, the state of California finalized its finding that third-hand exposure to be meth becomes dangerous when it reaches 1.5 μg/100 cm2, a metric that has been tacitly endorsed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but so far, only a handful of states have incorporated that rule into law.
All of these measurements are
microscopic—less than the size of a fraction of a grain of salt on an area the
size of a CD case—but for homeowners, landlords, housing agencies,
mortgage-holding banks left with a meth-effected property, it pays to be in a
1.5 μg/100 cm2 area.
Since the Kateri Court disaster, Washington
State has upped its threshold for meth contamination. Had the state done that a year earlier, it would have
shaved $200,000 off the price of remediating the building, according to Power,
"and based on the reasoning employed by the [state] health department, no one's
health would have been placed at risk by performing a more modest and
reasonable cleanup."
A few ounces of crank in a sock drawer can require a visit from a crew in hazmat suits.
If you were the proud owner of one
of the
thousands of meth sites busted last year, some combination of police, firefighters, and public
health officials probably removed anything immediately explosive or flammable
from your property. A local or state health department then likely demanded you
shutter the place until you had fulfilled whatever cleanup requirements pertain
to your area, and then handed you a list of licensed testing and remediation
contractors.
Typically, testing is required if
the authorities find meth or evidence of its use. A few ounces of crank in a
sock drawer can require a visit from a crew in hazmat suits who will wipe every
surface for samples to test.
Jennifer McQuerrey Rhyne, owner of
Affordable Clean Up LLC,
which
remediates meth sites across West Virginia
, says the cleaning an average
home costs about ten grand. This is in addition to replacing all of the
miscellaneous items in rooms dubbed "contaminated" by West Virginia's standard—the archaic 0.1 μg/100 cm2. In one case of low-level contamination, she
cleaned the house of a woman whose adult grandson smokes meth in the basement.
"She lost everything, all the belongings she acquired throughout her life,"
Rhyne tells me.
Kent A. Berg, president of
Decontamination Professionals International, a South Carolina–based cleanup and
cleanup contractor training company, says costs vary. "It depends on the level
of contamination and the contents of the house."Some materials,
like wood and carpeting, are more absorbent. Berg gives a range of $2 to $8 per
square foot.
Most companies that clean meth
properties also test them for contamination levels. Though states license these
contractors, mostly to ensure they're trained to deal with hazardous waste,
there is little oversight of them once they are in the field. Some health departments,
like the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, do occasional random
checks, testing meth properties and comparing their results with that of the
contractor assigned to it, but that's not a universal practice.
Because of this, Berg recommends
bringing in one company to do the testing and another to do the cleaning, "so
there's no impropriety." But he adds that most people left with a meth property
use the same contractor for both. "Most companies out there are aboveboard," Berg
says. "But [the process] does leave the question: Was the testing done in a way
that was self-serving?"
While the costs to clean individual
homes are high, the price to remediate public housing and the community spaces—places
built to serve the same downtrodden populations who happen to be meth's target
demographic—can be astronomical.
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For over six months now, the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have struggling to contain meth cleanup
costs on the Flathead Indian Reservation, a span of land that stretches five counties
and is home to 28,000 people in Western Montana. Last February, a custodian
found a meth pipe in a washing machine in the basement of the Arlee Head Start
Center, a pre-K program with an enrollment of 38 kids, according to tribal
spokesman Robert McDonald. The tribes shut down the center. (The program itself
continued at a nearby church during the two months the building was
off-limits.) The Tribal Council then ordered meth residue tests on all public
buildings. The immersion school, community center, and health clinic all came up
clean, but residue was found in the senior center, a nonresidential building
that hosts programs and weekly meals for the elderly. "Definitely from
smoking," according to the center's director, Willie Stevens. "No one here has
been making." The senior center, too, was deemed off-limits.
Last year, the Salish &
Kootenai Housing Authority started a policy of testing each of its public
housing units upon a renter vacating. So far, 36—half of those tested—have come
up positive for meth, increasing the waiting list for housing.
According to the US Justice Department, Native Americans have the highest meth
usage rates of any ethnic group. "It'd be hard to find an Indian community that
hasn't been impacted by drugs," says tribal spokesperson McDonald. "Recently,
we've seen a lot of meth and prescription drugs. ... Where there is pain, there
is addiction. There is something called historical trauma."
Technically, the tribes' meth
cleanup is entirely voluntarily. Jurisdiction can be complicated in Indian
country, but Montana environmental laws do not pertain to reservations. Still, on
matters of ecology, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes try to utilize
state laws in order to be good neighbors according to McDonald. Because
Montana adheres to the old 0.1 μg/100 cm2 standard, that courtesy
hasn't been cheap.
The tribes spent $50,000
remediating and reopening the Head Start Center. (That cost does not include
replacing all of the items that were thrown out.) The Tribal Council is still
creating a plan to remediate the senior center and the rental units. McDonald
says each cleanup will cost $50,000 to $80,000, coming from the tribes' budget.
"If we were out in California, we'd
be paying half of what we are paying," he says.
Fourteen states hold onto the
standard of 0.1 μg of meth residue per 100 cm2: Alaska,
Arizona,
Arkansas,
Connecticut,
Hawaii,
Idaho,
Kentucky,
Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina,
South Dakota, Tennessee,
and
West Virginia. (Arkansas' threshold is actually 0.05 μg/100 cm2,
though 0.1. μg/100 cm2 is the lowest level detectable, so that's the
limit by default.)
Indiana,
Michigan
and Oregon
go by 0.5 μg/100 cm2. Utah's
standard is 1.0 μg/100 cm2. Seven states have moved the needle to 1.5 μg/100
cm2: California,
Colorado,
Kansas,
Minnesota,
Virginia,
Washington, and
Wyoming.
If you don't see your state, you
don't get off scot free; it might have a different way of measuring meth
toxicity. Also, your city or county probably has protocols and standards,
especially if you live out in
meth country.
Of the places that have the more 1.5
μg/100 cm2 standard, most loosened their regulations in response to what,
in public health and remediation circles, has come to be known as "the
California Study." (Its actual name: "Assessment of Children's Exposure to Surface Methamphetamine Residues in Former Clandestine Methamphetamine Labs, and Identification of a Risk-Based Cleanup Standard for Surface Methamphetamine Contamination.")
In 2005, as the state was dealing
with about 100 meth busts a year, the California legislature ordered the
premier scientific study on the toxicity threshold of third-hand meth exposure, i.e.,
how much residue in your house would make you sick. The job fell to two state
agencies: the Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The study was authored by Dr. Charles
B. Salocks, a toxicologist who had been working in various state
environmental agencies since 1989.
Coming up with the measurement "was
a two-part process," Salocks tells VICE. "One was to characterize the toxicity
of meth at low levels." The second was "estimation of the exposure that a small
child living in a former clandestine lab would receive."
As for figuring out the toxicity of
meth, there was actually a few filing cabinets worth of studies dating back a
century for Salocks to consult. Before it was a sludge that hillbillies used to
get high, before it was a West Coast club drug that paired well with gay sex,
before it provided a revenue stream and means to ride all night to Hell's
Angels, methamphetamine was used as a stimulant for
Allied and Axis
powers in World War II. Before that, meth's parent drug, amphetamine, was manufactured
and sold as a decongestant and stimulate. This left 125 controlled experimental
studies, in several languages and from military and big pharma scientists, for
Salocks to consult.
"We looked at studies from the
Germans in the 1930s when they were trying to improve the performance of
soldiers," he says. "We reviewed the human studies [in which] women gained
weight during pregnancy when they were taking methamphetamine." If it was a
reliable scientific study on humans absorbing meth, Salocks incorporated it.
To unlock the second half of the
equation—determining how much residue meth would make it into the system of a
small child—Salocks relied on previous scientific models, such as the EPA's
Stochastic Human Exposureand Dose Simulation Model, used in previous studies of chemical exposure.
"Basically, we were trying to figure out how much someone who's always touching
things, who might be on the floor, with sticks his fingers in his mouth would
be exposed to a toxin in the environment."
The conclusion: 1.5 μg/100 cm2
or less of meth residue is harmless.
This does not mean there are no
precautions to be taken before moving into a "meth house." "Other
contaminants may be present," according to Sallocks. "Cleanup specialists
generally don't test for those chemicals and don't have cleanup numbers for
them." If you experience the headaches, nausea, and sleep disturbances that
have been observed in these places and your methamphetamine residues are less
than 1.5 μg/100 cm2, it's likely something else leftover from the
meth operation.
Adopted as a legal standard, 1.5
μg/100 cm2 will save anyone from moving into an untreated meth lab, according
to Salocks—except in cases of lithium/anhydrous ammonia synthesis, which does
not generate fumes, and "in cases where the 'cook' was extremely careful about
venting fumes to the outdoors." It just might not prevent you from moving into
a place where someone burned some meth every now and then or a place like the
apartments in Kateri Court, where someone a few units over was doing crank. The
1.5 μg/100 cm2 standard "would be hard to achieve if you were simply
smoking meth," says Salocks. "It's not like smoking a cigarette. You put a
glass pipe up to your mouth and take it right into your lungs. It's a pretty
efficient process."
The standard is of course not beyond
challenge. A new study could settle on a different number. But many
professionals specializing in meth consider it preferable to the old one, which
is based on no science. The same year the California study was first released, the
federal Methamphetamine Remediation Research Act
required
the EPA to come up with its own voluntary guidelines for meth cleanup. With 35 public
health officials specializing in meth, from agencies across the country,
signing on, it adopted the 1.5 μg/100 cm2 standard.
But so far only a handful of states
and other jurisdiction have made it law, leaving property owners and housing
agencies coughing up cash to meet the stricter standards.
As Catholic Housing Services was tearing
apart Kateri Court's ventilation system, public housing agencies in Washington
State were also getting clobbered by meth costs.
The Peninsula Housing Authority,
responsible for the public housing in the two counties across the Puget Sound
from Seattle, had three 1940s-era duplexes it couldn't fill until it paid for a
$200,000 cleanup, according to Executive Director Kay Kassinger. In each case,
a resident smoked meth in one unit of the duplex and particles seeped into the
other half. "The remediation company told us we'd have to tear them all apart,
down to the studs," says Kissinger.
The Tacoma Housing Authority has it
even worse. It tests every unit upon vacancy would up with about 140 "hot"
apartments within three years, according to Executive Director Michael Mirra.
The cost to clean them all was about $4 million.
There had never been a bust for
meth manufacturing in either's jurisdiction, the two agencies claim.
"It was not affordable and not
justifiable because it was not a health-based criteria," according to Mirra.
So, the two housing authorities and the Association of Washington Housing
Authorities made a formal petition for a rules change to the Department of
Health.
Under Washington State law, the
standard of meth remediation was entirely left to the Department of Health.
Still, the state legislature held a hearing on it. The change seemed like a
no-brainer to state Rep. Steve Tharinger.
"We looked at the study from
California. The housing authorities wanted a change," Tharinger told VICE. "Public health officials
said [the stringent standard] wasn't needed, and it wasn't meth labs. It was
just renters or occupants smoking."
A few remediation contractors
raised a small fuss. According to the minutes of the hearing, some submitted
written comments stating "[a} belief that the primary study considered in
establishing the new standard is flawed; and without a strict standard to
determine a property has been used as a lab, many homes in need of remediation
will not be detected."
"But of course they didn't have
much credibility," according to Rep. Tharinger.
In January, Secretary of Health Dr.
John Wiesman signed off on the change, establishing Washington State's
threshold for meth remediation in 1.5 μg/100 cm2 standard. Meanwhile, counties
have chosen to keep the old one. But contractors working for the Peninsula
Housing Authority were able to meet the new threshold by simply washing down
the surface areas of three units.
The change could have helped the
administrators of Kateri Court, but Steve Powers, division director, takes one
consolation from the experience.
"It's the cleanest building in
Whatcom County, if not the state, as far as I'm concerned."