In this thread, inkleberry mentions that her neighbors have a powerful cat pee odor coming from their kitchen. Turns out this odor could very well be from her neighbors making meth. Interesting.
So, I’ve heard multiple times about meth labs exploding and also about the huge hassle of cleaning up a meth lab, with hazmat teams and EPA stuff going on.
What is it about making meth that is so dangerous and toxic? (But, you know, don’t go into details that would get my thread closed down for legal reasons.)
I believe I can shed some light here. My expertise comes by way of being a police reporter for a newspaper in an area where a great many meth labs were routinely found. I will try to stay within the limits of the Board regarding this kind of thing.
Making and processing meth involves a couple of chemicals, none of them illegal. Among them are red phosphorous (flammable), iodine (not flammable, to my knowledge, but not exactly Kool-Aid) and kerosene.
One of the steps involved in making the stuff is “cooking,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Keep in mind the people who cook meth are not Ph.Ds. They routinely set up their facilities in unventilated areas, which may be old wooden houses or shacks. They also routinely leave their chemicals laying around in the open, including the kerosene, in unsealed containers or processing equipment.
All petroleum products (that includes kerosene) evaporate easily. So what you have is an enclosed space, filled with kerosene fumes. And when I said the people who cook meth are not Ph.ds, what are really meant is that most of them are downright STUPID. They decide to use an open flame to cook their batch. The result? Blammo.
The chemicals being left out and processed using amateur equipment is another reason cleaning these labs is so dangerour. Police never know exactly what they’ll find. It could be anything from a roomfull of kerosene fumes ready to blow, to a bathtub full of the chemical sludge left over from making dozens of batches. The chemicals involved in making the drug may be all legal, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe to breathe or absorb, anymore than bleach or ammonia are.
In fact, anhydrous ammonia is one of the chemicals used in meth production – which is one reason why meth labs are often located in or near rural areas (farmers use anhydrous ammonia as fertilizer.) Anhydrous is very bad stuff to breathe or expose your skin to. Skull and crossbones on the tank-type bad.
I think we all understand that the production of meth may be dangerous (and potentially explosive). But as I read the OP it is asking about toxicity. What are the toxic chemicals involved, and in what way are they toxic? How do they harm humans? Just how toxic are they? (Some posts have addressed this.)
This is an important issue, and not only from a public health perspective. I am aware of a number of counties and municipalities which have passed meth lab cleanup ordinances shifting the cleanup costs to property owners. So if you lease a mobile home or a house to someone who uses it as a meth lab (which then gets busted) the county or city sticks you (the landlord) with the toxic waste cleanup bill. And this happens whether or not you were aware of the situation. This places a burden on landlords to monitor their properties regularly for meth labs.
The bills for cleanup are often more than the value of the property itself in some rural areas, leading to confiscation and sale of property where meth labs have been found.
The contracts for cleanup sometimes get awarded on no-bid contracts, leading to suspicion of graft. (Do the cleanup contractor and city officials have a financially cozy arrangement under the table?)
All of this leads to concerns that the hazards of chemicals used in meth production might be overstated to justify these costly (and lucrative to the contractors) cleanups and confiscations.
I don’t say this is so, but I’m certainly curious about whether the toxicity of the chemicals involved justifies the level of alarm.
You can look up the hazard details of many chemicals here. It’s true that people tend to stress the potential risks of chemicals more than is probably absolutely necessary, but the chemicals found in a meth lab are certainly dangerous ones. The chemicals used vary depending on the method of production, but there are some common ones. Red phosphorus, unlike yellow phosphorus, does not ignite spontaneously on exposure to air, but it is still highly flammable. Iodine is a very reactive compound (a halogen, like chlorine), which is crystalline at room temperature, but it has a high vapor pressure, so an enclosed space containing iodine crystals may contain dangerous levels of iodine vapor.
Most of the other chemicals used also pose some health risk. If they were dumped on the ground or otherwise leaked into the soil, cleanup would be extremely difficult. The building that contains them may require a lot of repair before it is safe for someone else to live there. (This would be both because of building materials becoming contaminated and because of modifications to the building made by the meth producers.)
Probably the greatest threat to people living near a meth lab is the risk of fire. Virtually all organic solvents, from acetone to kerosene, are flammable and volatile, which means they produce a lot of vapor. This vapor can be ignited by a spark or open flame, causing a fire or explosion. When the vapor is lighter than air, it may tend to escape through the windows. When it’s heavier than air, it may tend to collect in the building. It’s possible that the concentration of vapor in a building may reach such levels that a spark or flame in an area of the building far from the meth lab might cause an explosion. Some solvents, such as diethyl ether, are even capable of igniting themselves, by reaction with air. If a fire occurs in a meth lab, many of the other chemicals will be involved, and the fumes and residue will both be highly toxic.
The risks involved in a meth lab are difficult to overstate. It’s always possible that the costs of cleanup are being overstated, because there’s always the potential for corruption in politics. It’s also possible that the risks are being exploited to support legislation that benefits the friends of politicians or affects the rights of people who aren’t involved in drug production. I have no idea whether this happens, and it would be unfortunate if it did. I can say, however, that the risks are quite real.
About four years ago, the environmental group the Sierra Club published an article in their magazine describing the environmental hazards of meth labs:
The Sierra Club is admittedly not one to understate the dangers of environmental threats. But Cheeses Rice, the discarded byproducts of this little cottage industry are apparently killing trees and cattle. Somehow I doubt that the toxicity of meth labs is just a bunch of PR hype.
I doubt the people making the stuff are wearing the HazMat suits you see clean-up crews wearing. Why aren’t we seeing more delightful darwinian/karmic justice where the people making meth come down with awful diseases? Or is that indeed happening, but it isn’t publicized (or is masked by the not-inconsiderably-awful effects of their own meth use)?
It must be very profitable for the producers to take such risks.
From what I can gather, the more common type of meth nowdays (around here, at least) is called “Nazi Meth” or something. Supposedly named after a quicker recipe invented during WWII. I have no idea if this is an accurate anecdote, just what I’ve been told.
Anyway, it seems like this type of meth does not need the red phosphorous and iodine, but anhydrous ammonia, ether, and nasal inhalers are the key ingredients. At least these are the items that make the paper. I can’t imagine the type of people making this stuff have access to red phosphorous, but several a week are busted stealing ammonia.
I live in Bradford County, PA, which happens to be the meth capital of the US.
I don’t know the “recipe” or anything, but I can tell you that the two most shoplifted items around here are Sudafed and batteries, which kids steal to make their meth.
I would guess that the long-term effects are overtaken by the short-term effects of using the meth. Meth users are rarely very healthy-looking people, and I understand it does considerable brain damage. (Sadly, my once-really-intelligent cousin is now a wreck of her former self…)
OTOH, I don’t know much about the life expectancy of your average meth user. Do people overdose and die younger than usual, thus avoiding cancer, or can they expect to live long lives, burdened with their stupidity and an eventual serious disease?
The “nazi” method IS distinct from the “red p” red phosphorus and iodine method we’ve been discussing. It uses anhydrous ammonia, as has also been discussed, and lithium metal, which may be obtained from lithium batteries. What both routes have in common is that they start from ephedrine or pseudoephedrine obtained from OTC medications. You could get it from pseudoephedrine inhalers, cold pills or diet pills. The people stealing batteries in addition to the sudafed are using the “nazi” technique, so named because it is apparently based on the method used by Germany in WWII to obtain methamphetamine for military use.
In either case, they will be messing with nasty organic solvents, which is why the process is explosive, as noted by Roches.
The profit IS great, particularly if they are stealing some of the raw ingredients rather than casting suspicion on themselves by purchasing them in large quantities. I ran across a figure of $150 ingredients -> $10,000 worth of methamphetamine. That might be overstated, but the point is that a very cheap setup can yield illegal substances worth a lot on the street.
Thanks yabob for confirming that what I heard wasn’t totally out in left field.
This stuff is an epidemic around here, recently the District Attorney for a local area was removed from office for meth use/sales. A large percentage of crime is attributed to meth addicts looking for easy money to buy meth. Just rampant.
Here in Missouri we regularly see stories about meth labs blowing up. Is that the type of darwinian/karmic justice you’re looking for? If you want the cancer/liver/kidney failure type stories, they will take a few more years to develop. Assuming the cookers don’t die of something else first.
I also meant to observe that there are some moves to attempt to curtail meth labs by tightening up restrictions on pseudoephedrine based medications. Pseudoephedrine is a very useful legitimate pharmaceutical, and the acceptability of OTC use has been long established. It’s not clear that restrictions to prevent illegal use in manufacturing methamphetamine would be a good idea.
Somewhat ironic, in that we got here because of tightened restrictions on precursor chemicals used in the earlier “P2P” process used a couple decades ago, when outlaw biker gangs controlled most speed production. “P2P” refers to phenyl-2-propanone, which was restricted. I don’t know how dangerous that synthesis was. The operations were, I believe, fewer in number, but larger scale than these current “mom and pop” meth labs.
Okay, the ingredients for meth have always sort of fascinated me. I mean, here we’re tlaking about lithium batteries, ammonia, and a host of other chemicals that aren’t typically used in the body. How did the concept of combining this stuff come about? Is there (or was there) a legitimate use for methamphetamines? Meth has always seemed to me to be a drug with no positive effects and a long list of negatives. Why would one take it?