In dealing with toxic chemicals, most meth lab clean-up crews follow general guidelines. In the room where the meth was made, they scrub all surfaces, repaint the walls, replace the carpets and air filters, and air out the property. However, there are no national standards for meth lab cleanups—regulations differ from state to state. And in some states, getting a license to decontaminate a house is as easy as taking a few hours of class and a written test. "There are some bad certification methods out there. You could be a pizza delivery guy, study for a month, pay $250 and be certified," said Joe Mazzuca, a methamphetamine contamination expert and CEO of Meth Lab Cleanup, a nationwide meth-lab-specific cleanup company based in Boise, Idaho. In the Alkinanis' case, the person who decontaminated their house may have shirked his responsibility by cleaning too quickly and not using the correct cleaning agents.
And while some states, such as Colorado, Washington and North Carolina, employ effective regulations, some experts think that many may not. In Idaho, for example, a former lab is deemed "clean" when there is less than one tenth of a microgram of methamphetamine per square centimeter in the room where meth was cooked. If the amount of meth detected is at such a low level, some state regulators think, meth's precursor chemicals are at low levels too. "We just check for meth," said Jim Faust of Idaho's Clandestine Drug Lab Cleanup Program, a statewide program based in Boise, Idaho.
Like Idaho, many states only check for meth in the room where the drug was cooked. This method doesn't account for toxic dust or harmful chemicals that may have traveled to other parts of the house.
Of all the toxic chemicals in a meth house, methamphetamine itself is probably the hardest to clean up, but it's actually the least toxic. Meth's precursors pose the greatest health risk to residents of a former meth lab. When people smoke or shoot meth they face serious health risks, but they usually don't die; they just get high. Many of meth's toxic precursors, if smoked or injected, are lethal.
Even if a meth house is cleaned properly, some experts worry that meth toxins may hang around. Glenn Morrison, an engineering professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo., questions the adequacy of current meth house cleanup standards, emphasizing their failure to ensure the removal of toxins that are absorbed by the home. "These clean-ups tend to be somewhat superficial when it comes to permanent building materials," he said.
Morrison recently received funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to investigate exactly how methamphetamine contamination lingers in buildings. He hopes to figure out whether current meth lab cleanup protocols properly address contamination. "Building materials absorb pollutants, even if the materials are not obviously porous or fleecy. This contamination can be re-released, even after the building has been cleaned," Morrison said.
Professional meth house cleanup contractors estimate that about 90 percent of meth houses are never uncovered, and their tenants will likely never know about their homes' toxicity. Many of the meth houses that are discovered are listed on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Clandestine Drug Lab Registry or on other state databases.
The DEA's registry lists 113,464 meth labs that were uncovered from 1999 to 2008, but many meth experts think this figure is an underestimate. "The record keeping is horrific. The DEA's list can't be relied upon because it's completely voluntary," said Dawn Turner, who started methlabhomes.com, a free, Web-based resource for people who have unknowingly purchased a meth house. "I've heard estimates that there are a million to a million and a half meth homes and most of them are never found by the police department," she added. In the area where the Alkinanis lived, there were 250 known meth houses and most of their owners had no clue about their homes' nefarious pasts. The exact number of meth houses in the United States is still unknown.
And although meth houses are more concentrated in certain states—Missouri is the meth capitol of the world, with 1,471 labs discovered in 2008 alone—there are meth houses in all fifty states, and they can be found in posh towns. Consider a lab found in Framingham, Mass., a town with an average home price of around $350,000. Or a lab found in Norwalk, Conn., where the average home is valued at $694,000. "There is a misconception that these houses are crack houses. They are absolutely not. A meth house in Kentucky recently went on the market for $700,000 dollars," Turner said.
With so many homes potentially contaminated by methamphetamine production, meth experts estimate that thousands to tens of thousands of people have discovered that what they thought was the American dream—a nice home for the family—is actually an American nightmare, and the potential cause of a range of health problems and a stack of medical bills. But is the issue receiving enough attention? Not for people like Turner. "States are really dragging their feet on this issue," she said.
The Alkinanis agree. Because there were no meth lab disclosure laws in Utah at the time they bought their house, they have no financial or legal recourse. "We are paying the price for what one person did," said Jaimee Alkinani. "My child will likely have a lifetime of permanent medical issues because of this house, and we are going into bankruptcy because we can't sell the house."
This article is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.