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."

Crime Scene Leftovers Pose Problem For Sanitation

Call it the Case of the Bloody Mattress.

City sanitation workers in southwestern Kentucky were recently left with the problem of how to dispose of a bloody mattress put out with the trash.

The mattress came from a home where police say a 37-year-old man appears to have died from self-inflicted stab wounds. The problem came when trash collectors realized they couldn't pick up a potential biohazard, but didn't want to leave it by the side of the road in a residential neighborhood in Hopkinsville.

"This was an area of concern for us because blood is considered a biohazard and not only can our trash trucks not pick it up, but it could be dangerous for people in the community," said George Hampton, a route supervisor for Hopkinsville Solid Waste Authority.

The Kentucky New Era reports that the mattress disappeared by midweek, but sanitation officials didn't take it and were still trying to make sure it was properly disposed of. The location of the mattress remained a mystery at week's end.

Hopkinsville sanitation workers received an anonymous call reporting a mattress, possibly covered in blood, that had been set on a curb outside of a home. That was the concern of the anonymous caller, Hampton said, who said children in the neighborhood could start to play on the mattress and come into contact with the dried blood that might have diseases.

Because there was blood on the mattress, sanitation workers couldn't haul it off with the rest of the trash.

"It raises a question for us about where we take it from here," Hampton said. "Someone has to clean up messes like these and we can't do it."

Solid Waste Superintendent Bill Bailey said sanitation workers aren't allowed to pick up possible biohazards, including blood, from the side of the road. Instead, Bailey said, the department needs to call other landfills to see who will pick up and take the items.

"Sometimes we can process and wrap it in plastic and dispose of it that way. But other times we have to contact a company that deals with disposing of medical waste."

Charlotte Write, a spokeswoman for Stericycle, a national company that specializes in medical waste disposal, said medical waste is generally burned to kill pathogens that can live in dried blood.

"It is important to dispose of all medical waste, especially waste that comes from the body, so as not to spread diseases," Write said.

Hopkinsville Police Chief Guy Howie said the families must clean up the scene of a murder or suicide or pay to have it done.

"It doesn't sound very friendly, I know, but that's just how it has to be handled," Howie said. "Someone has to clean it up and someone has to dispose of all of this, it's just a matter of figuring out who. It's amazing that just one mattress on a curb can raise so many questions."

Someone solved sanitation's problem by taking the mattress from in front of the home. Bailey said sanitation workers didn't remove it, but finding out what became of the mattress is important. It had to be properly sterilized and disposed of.

"We can't just stick it in our landfill and be done with it," Bailey said. "Whether it's on that curb or not, it's still hazardous material."