Ailments Surface In Police Exposed To Meth Chemicals

In the small Oklahoma town of Cromwell, Hank Neal was living the good life. At age 32, he was a husband, father of four and a well-known Seminole County deputy sheriff. When he wasn't chasing the bad guys, Neal attended every baseball game in town.

Now, on his bad days, Neal uses a walker to get to the bathroom. Gout, a joint disease, has invaded both of his arms and legs, causing him to hunch over and draw inward. His days are scheduled around doctors' appointments and workers' compensation hearings. His nights are worse.

Neal's wife, Dian, loses her composure when she tells of his suicide attempts. There have been two so far.

In December 1999, Neal raided a methamphetamine lab while on duty and got a bloody nose. He didn't think anything of it, not even when, a week later, he began throwing up and having diarrhea.

At the time, they blamed a beer can that was hurled at him from a passing car, hitting him in the head. Now they blame the meth lab.

Victims of methamphetamine can reach well beyond the addicts and their assorted crimes. As the epidemic continues, deadly and debilitating ailments are surfacing in police officers and deputies assigned to investigate these labs, which are found in garages and kitchens, in mobile vans and motel rooms and elsewhere.

Only recently has the significance of being exposed to meth chemicals become known. A few years ago, officers raided labs with rubber gloves. Now they wear full-body protective gear and masks.

Sometimes officers stumble onto the labs accidentally. Unprotected, they are subjected to the fumes of phosphane gas, hydrochloric acid, anhydrous ammonia, Red Devil lye and a half-dozen other substances.

The health fallout is becoming more apparent as Oklahoma's meth lab epidemic now approaches five years. What was once a series of anecdotal cases may well become an alarming trend, those in law enforcement say.

"One of my agents has a spot on his liver. I know another agent from another agency who has a spot on his lung," said Dianne Barker-Harrold, district attorney for Adair, Cherokee, Sequoyah and Wagoner counties in northeastern Oklahoma, where meth lab seizures are common.

Barker-Harrold told of a Muldrow officer who found a meth lab during a traffic stop.

"He looked in the trunk of a car, took the lid off something, smelled it and he was down for the count because it was hydrochloric acid. The fumes are just terrible," she said. "There's going to be long-term effects to these officers."

Those long-term effects can matter to everyone in terms of health care costs and emotional fallout.

Consider Jamie Ward, a young Yukon police officer who assisted in searching for meth lab suspects during a raid in January. Ward, who was not wearing protective gear, ended up in the emergency room that night.

"She was in really bad shape and nearly died of lung injuries," said John Duncan, chief agent for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. "Her lungs are permanently and irrevocably damaged."

The damage not only ended her law enforcement career, but her part-time singing career, Duncan said. At age 30, Ward constantly wheezes and struggles to breathe.

Some officers don't get sick until repeated exposures over time. The effects are cumulative, meaning fumes that don't do damage in one dose can build up over time, said Jerry Harris of the Oklahoma Narcotics Bureau.

Different chemicals have different effects as well. Some attack the lungs, others the kidney and liver, others the joints, Duncan said.

Roy Wunderlich, a Los Angeles police officer, had investigated about 1,500 meth labs in his career. He later developed a rare liver cancer that has been associated with breathing chemicals.

Wunderlich battled the Los Angeles Police Department for compensation and won. But that's not always the case.

Neal, for instance, recently lost his claim for workers' compensation. An order from the workers' compensation court said the statute of limitations had passed. His wife said that is because they didn't realize meth could be the cause until two years later, when a blood test revealed a severe infection.

"That's one of the problems with longtime exposures," Duncan said. "You can't always tell what the lab caused and what was caused by just normal living. We're all subject to getting cancer and lung ailments."

"We're going to have real problems in the future in terms of health care. All these people we're running across in these labs, they're going to have health problems in the future and the health care system is going to have a problem," Harris said.

This is very sad. Logic would indicate that officers of the law should be trained how to handle suspicious substances and not to go sniffing unknown substances. This doesn't have to happen to any more of our law officers.

It still ahppens around here from time to time. A lot of the chemicals are transfered in vehicles that are of the sort that get pulled over regularly. Cop searches the vehicle because the driver is usually under some sort of warrant and gets exposed. Sad.

EBUCK

Do the operators of meth labs also get crippling diseases from their hobby? Or are they immune?

My question exactly.
How is it that just the law enforcement officers are suffering these affects after a very short expsoure and the perps are unscathed after long term exposure, something doesn't wash here.

Gee, you don't suppose the unions are involved here, do you? Nah, couldn't be.

Not sure who is involved but you would think more perps, would end up in hospitals, or dropping dead by the bundle from these chemicals.

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