Cleaning up meth labs costly for state

Cleaning up meth labs in the state last year cost millions of dollars, the head of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics said.

In Mississippi, it costs from $2,500 to $7,000 to clean up a meth lab, said director Marshall Fisher.

In 2009, more than 620 meth labs were seized in the state, which translates to a cost of between $1.5 million and $4.3 million.

But the overall cost of cleaning up everything about meth use is virtually immeasurable, experts say.

"There are costs to the state to put children in foster care when they're removed from parents who use meth," said Cathy Dixon, a psychologist/consultant who lectures on the topic of meth abuse.

"There's the cost of medical care."

This year, the Department of Human Services has removed at least 30 children from meth homes.

The MBN calculates the cost of one meth-abuse case at $100,000, Fisher said.

That appraisal includes the expense of foster care, as well as medical care for victims of burns.

"A child in state custody who has been injured because of a meth lab will have his or her medical care paid for by the state, maybe forever," Dixon said.

"Many meth labs are discovered because they explode."

A possible case in point: In late January, a Madison County woman was burned while allegedly making meth.

She was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, then later transported to a burn center in Atlanta.

Even after cleaning up such a site in Madison County, there are other issues.

Not only can chemical contamination invade the home where meth was produced, it also can disturb the surrounding land, surface waters and groundwater.

Smoking meth can pollute a structure, reports the Environmental Protection Agency.

While the EPA provides voluntary guidelines for meth cleanup, they are "not meant to supersede municipal, county or state guidance documents, regulations or statutes," according to its Web site.

"There are absolutely concerns about meth cleanup," said Rusty Payne, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, which distributes federal money to pay contractors for meth cleansings

"Contractors will get rid of the gross contamination -visible spills, liquids, everything you can see," Payne said.

"Does that make it safe for habitation? The answer is no.

"To ensure what's called remediation is the responsibility of the homeowner.

"So if you've rented your house to a meth cook, you must see to the hard-core, intense sanitizing that makes it safe to live in again.

"Some meth labs are so bad and harmful, you can't do anything but tear the house down."

Beyond the tangible expense of scouring toxic meth lab sites, there is a price the state must pay in human misery, Fisher said.

It's a price his agents see almost every day on the job.

"They're knocking on doors at 2 in the morning, putting people in cuffs in front of their children - complete strangers doing this to their parents. Then they call in more strangers from DHS to ask them questions.

"The children have to take off all their clothes and be examined - again by strangers - because they may be contaminated.

"I don't know how you measure that cost."

Teen Suicide Risk Factors: Parents Are Too Often Clueless

By Nancy Shute

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers, and it's a tragedy that can be prevented. Given that almost 15 percent of high school students say they've seriously considered suicide in the past year, parents and friends need to know how to recognize when a teenager is in trouble and how to help.

Parents can be clueless when it comes to recognizing suicide risk factors, or at least more clueless than teens. In a new survey of teenagers and parents in Chicago and in the Kansas City, Kan., area, which appears online in Pediatrics, both parents and teenagers said that teen suicide was a problem, but not in their community. Alas, teen suicide is a universal problem; no area is immune.

The teenagers correctly said that drug and alcohol use was a big risk factor for suicide, with some even noting that drinking and drug use could be a form of self-medication or self-harm. By contrast, many of the parents shrugged off substance abuse as acceptable adolescent behavior. As one parent told the researchers: "Some parents smoke pot with their kids or allow their kids to drink."

Both teenagers and parents said that guns should be kept away from a suicidal teen. But since parents said they didn't think they could determine when a teenager was suicidal, parents should routinely lock up firearms, the researchers suggest. That makes sense. Firearms are used in 43.1 percent of teen suicides, according to 2006 data, while suffocation or hanging accounts for 44.9 percent.

The good news: Both parents and teenagers in this small survey (66 teenagers and 30 parents) said they'd like more help learning how to know when someone is at risk of committing suicide and what to do. Schools and pediatricians should be able to help, but we can all become better educated through reliable resources on the Web. These authoritative sites list typical signs of suicide risk, and they also provide questions a parent or a friend can ask a teenager to find out if he is considering killing himself. Here are good places to start:

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry lists signs and symptoms of suicidal thinking, such as saying things like "I won't be a problem for you much longer."

The American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to ask the child directly about suicide. "Getting the word out in the open may help your teenager think someone has heard his cries for help."

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides free advice to someone considering suicide, as well as to friends and relatives, at 800-273-TALK.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness's teenage suicide page makes the point that talking with someone about suicide will not "give them the idea." "Bringing up the question of suicide and discussing it without showing shock or disapproval is one of the most helpful things you can do," the NAMI site says. "This openness shows that you are taking the individual seriously and responding to the severity of his or her distress."

Cleanup completed at Civic Association

April 5, 2009

Cleanup has been completed at the American Civic Association building in Binghamton, where a gunman killed 13 people and injured four before taking his own life Friday.

The American Bio-Recovery Association, a non-profit international association of crime and trauma scene professionals, said Sunday that the bio-recovery cleaning was complete. The Ipswich, Mass.-based group provided the service at no cost.

Two member companies, Disaster Clean Up of Endwell and the Bio-Recovery Corporation of New York City, donated labor and supplies to remediate the scene with a crew of six technicians.